Adelsverein

by Celia Hayes

  “You’re a wicked man, Hans Richter,” Liesel told him with mock severity.

  He pinched her breast lightly. “And you love every minute of it,” he whispered, as his hand ventured lower, lower still. “And every inch too, I warrant.”

  “Don’t ever leave me,” she whispered, welcoming him again into her body; ah, the dear and familiar way of it, the dance of married folk, easy and accustomed to each other’s bodies, dear and content to touch and embrace every part.

  “Never,” he answered confidently. “Never again . . . well, maybe in the summer while I take another herd up to Kansas. But until then,” he smiled at her and whispered as his body pressed hers lovingly into the featherbed, “I shall stay here with you, Lise. The boys will take care of the wagons . . . and I will spend the days minding the business, and the nights with you.”

  And with that, thought Lise as she pulled her husband to her and he whispered endearments into her ear, she must be content. After all, next summer was a long way away, and her husband lay with her, bare skin to bare skin, and what was closer than that?

  Even so, there were things to say. “Hansi,” she whispered tentatively after another considerable time. His callused hands on her back pulled her close against his body. She thought he might have dropped off to sleep, for that was his way after happily exhausting both of them in the pleasures of the marriage bed. “Hansi, there is something I must ask.”

  “Ask away, then.” No, he was not asleep; his voice was alert, thoughtful.

  “There is something that no one has told me,” she ventured. “About our little boy, about Willi.” She felt her throat tighten, and firmly willed her voice to remain steady, the tears not to fall. “Amidst all this joy, it seems that no one can bring themselves to speak of him. Was there anything said to Fredi, nothing that Johann could find out at this fort place in Kansas . . . about his fate?”

  His arm tightened comfortingly around her, and his voice was thick with compassion. “Lise,” he ventured at last, “from what your brother told me, and I have no reason to doubt, our boy was last seen alive in an Indian camp about six months after capture. No one has seen him since. Johnson brought me only reports of a girl, never a boy of his description.”

  “So he is dead, then,” Liesel said, brokenly. “I have begun to fear such.”

  “I think so, Lise,” Hansi agreed. His voice sounded solemn, as if he sorrowed but his grieving had long been done. He touched her face with his free hand, smudging the tears that had begun to trickle down her cheek. “I think he has been lost to us for some time since. Lise-love, it is a sorrow, but one that we can bear. Think on this, my dear—we have been given nine children, of which fate or the Gods or whatever took four from us. Yet one has been given back and the rest thrive. We are fortunate, more fortunate than perhaps we deserve. Let us bend our minds toward the children we have, Lise, not the ones taken from us.”

  “I shall try,” she whispered, between sobs. “But . . . such a grief!”

  “Must be endured,” he answered, “as do others grieve. They bear it, and go on. Lise, dearest; Grete has been given back to us. Think on that gift! Think on our boys, and on Anna and Marie! Come downstairs, out of this room and be well again. Come to San Antonio; such fine amusements for you and Anna to partake in. Madame Guenther will take such enjoyment in your company. Think of how you shall decorate our new house there! Grander than ever, bigger than the house at Live Oak! Will you consent to this, Lise?” he begged.

  Her arms went around him, as far as she could reach. She could never deny him this, or anything else he wanted of her, not since she was a girl. Love me, my husband, she begged silently, communicating through her embrace. Love me and never leave me again. This place is so large, so empty. I am lost without you.

  * * *

  “Not only had your uncles had success with the cattle drive that year,” Magda explained to Lottie, “but they had made many friends and even found some interested in investing in western cattle. The stock that Hansi brought back from the east went into pasture under your brothers’ care. Fredi took over management of the Live Oak property. And after the turn of the new year, Hansi took Liesel and his daughters to San Antonio. His grand new house was nearly finished.” The parlor clock chimed gently—neither Lottie nor her mother felt like sleeping. It seemed as if the memories of the old days held them in a spell. Lottie was entranced, for her mother had never spoken so freely of those matters of which she herself possessed only a child’s limited recall.

  “I remember,” Lottie answered. “You and Nannie went with them and she remained there, to go to the Ursuline School. I would have been a little jealous, but even with Grete returned, Auntie Liesel still frightened me. She behaved so strangely, sometimes. But Onkel Hansi was so attentive to her.”

  “He loved her very much, Lottie,” Magda explained gently. “Everything that he did in life, I think Hansi thought first of whether it would please her or not. Moving his business concerns to San Antonio was advantageous to him, but he also thought it would be better for her. She might feel safer living in a city, far away from the frontier and Indian war parties, and there would be doctors that might better advise them. She would go into the garden on her better days. If he and Anna accompanied her, she would consent to go in a carriage to the finest shops or to the gardens around the marvelous San Pedro springs. She was content for some months, until spring…”

  “Time for the cattle herd to go north again,” Lottie said.

  Her mother nodded. “They planned again, the same as the year before; only this time, two herds. Each with a crew of thirty drovers and a cook wagon, traveling two or three days apart, along the same trail as the year before. Your uncles thought Cousin Peter was experienced enough after the first drive to be the trail boss of the first herd, and Hansi intended to travel with them, driving a supply wagon as he had before. Fredi and Dolph would follow with a second herd. We had taken much care with the arrangements, Lottie!” Magda exclaimed, reminiscently. “But there was only so much that we could do! So much depended upon what waited at the end of the trail, in Kansas! There were decisions that only Hansi could make, decisions that would have to be made on the spot! Just when everything was in readiness, two days before they were to depart—disaster!”

  “I remember it seemed most romantic, at the time.” Lottie smiled over her needlework.

  Her mother clicked her tongue against her teeth, disapprovingly. “Nothing romantic about a leg broken in two places,” she retorted. “Your uncle was in agony.”

  * * *

  Magda had been working in the store with Sam, listening with half an ear as Anna read off a list of merchandise in the storeroom, and thinking with some surprise how contented she felt. Anna and Hansi had arrived on the stage; Hansi to prepare for the long drive north, and Anna as ever his secretary and right arm. Jacob and George arrived with a wagon of goods for the store, thrilled with the excitement of seeing the beginning of another cattle drive. Peter had also come up from the Becker ranch, ready to spar with Anna after a winter of overseeing cattle. He came in riding a brown horse, and Magda’s heart turned with a pang of sorrow seeing him from a distance. So like Carl Becker, back when he would slip quietly into the house, in those months after they had been affianced and he was busy at building a proper stone house for her! She put those memories out of her mind almost at once, for Peter was merry and bold, in the way that she remembered him being before the war. Mr. Berg had done him well, with that mechanical arm.

  It was almost like it had been in the first year after the war, with Vati’s house full of family; not the sedate and quiet place that it had become with only herself and her own children in residence. She had missed Anna—so pleasant to have her back again for a long visit. And how beautifully and modishly turned out she was! Magda supposed that the shops in San Antonio must have recovered extraordinarily well from wartime shortages; that, or Liesel was reveling in the fashion-papers and her needle again.

  Outside
in the street, a wagon rattled past, turning the corner into their stableyard and halting on the gravel just outside the store-room’s outside door.

  “There’s Papa with the stores wagon,” Anna called from the other room. “Good, we can have the boys begin loading.” From outside came the sound of a horse whinnying in distress and the shout of a man, abruptly cut short by a thud, the kind made by something heavy striking the ground. “Papa!” shrieked Anna at once. Magda picked up her skirts and abandoned Mrs. Arhelger, halfway through a request for a sealed tin of that nice tea from Japan and a sack of bread flour. Her heart was already in her throat as she ran through the workroom, and into the storeroom, towards the double doors at the opposite end. She could see the wagon on the gravel drive, the dark form of a man lying there, crumpled as if he had fallen, and Anna bending over him with a face as white as milk. Hansi’s face was nearly as pale, already beaded with sweat from agony, but he tried to smile in reassurance to his daughter and sister-in-law.

  “Damn beast . . . shied at a dove starting up under its nose as I was climbing down . . . I’d sell the God-be-damned beast for that, if we didn’t have to leave tomorrow!”

  “Let me help you up, Papa,” Anna pleaded, but Hansi shook his head.

  “The brake didn’t hold. I fell badly—broke a bone by the sound of it! God in heaven it hurts! Send for Doctor Keidel, Annchen.” Hansi let his head fall back, and said his favorite oath, then groaned. “And not at a worse time! All our plans depend on the herd leaving in two days!”

  Magda sent Hannah for the doctor, while Peter and the boys made a litter out of some spare timber and their coats to carry Hansi inside—not without some difficulty, for he was no small weight. They laid him on the chaise in the parlor. By that time Doctor Keidel arrived, upbraiding them querulously for the clumsiness of the splint Peter had thought to affix to Hansi’s leg.

  “You are not fit to travel,” Doctor Keidel opined at last, before putting his coat back on. “Not for many weeks.”

  “But we are to take the trail north with the herd in two days,” Hansi said, thickly. The pupils of his eyes were already huge and he looked glassily cheerful, for Doctor Keidel had administered a good quantity of syrup of laudanum.

  “And so will pigs grow wings and begin to roost in trees,” Doctor Keidel responded. He held up his hand as if to block their fruitless protestations. “No, this I cannot approve for my patient!”

  “But our plans depend on this!” Anna cried, wringing her hands. “There are decisions to be made that only Papa might make!”

  “Well, then, someone else will have to make them,” Doctor Keidel insisted. “There is not enough laudanum in Texas to spare a man the pain of a broken leg, riding in a jolting wagon all the way to Kansas.”

  “We might hire someone else to drive the supply wagon,” Peter spoke up, from where he stood by the window. “And Mister Richter might go by stage two months from now, and meet us in Kansas, when we arrive.”

  “No, no,” Doctor Keidel shook his head. “The break is bad, and will hardly have begun to have knitted well. I must advise against that, medically speaking.”

  “Then someone else must meet the Kansas buyers,” Magda said. “Someone capable of bearing much responsibility.”

  “It’s not just at the other end,” Peter said earnestly. He looked troubled, for which Magda could hardly blame him. The onerous duty of trail boss would have been sufficient challenge, but now it would also fall to him and Fredi to negotiate with buyers, to step in and perform what Hansi had done so ably. “There are matters all the way along . . . matters involving money, which may only be decided by an owner, or someone of a better knowledge of the owner’s mind than mine.”

  “Then I should go to Kansas with the herd,” Anna announced, her chin lifted defiantly, before anyone had a chance to scoff. “And why not? I know Papa’s business better than anyone else, save perhaps Auntie Magda.”

  “That’s my poppet!” Hansi said with muzzy approval, amid a chorus of dismay from everyone else. “S-she does that, my clever little nun. To Kansas with the herd—just the ticket!”

  “But a respectable young woman alone and unmarried among all those men!” Magda exclaimed. “Even if she is chaperoned by one of her brothers, you know what people will be saying? Oh, what will they think of her? And what will they think of us and our businesses? Even people who know us, who respect us; they will wonder. No, Hansi—that wouldn’t do at all.”

  Anna was composed and thoughtful, the quietness in the heart of the storm around her. She merely tilted her head speculatively.

  “Well then,” she offered, “what if Mr. Vining and I married? Then I might accompany him and the herd to Kansas without any shred of impropriety attaching to us.”

  “Splendid idea!” Hansi agreed with such hearty exuberance that Magda wondered if Doctor Keidel had given him entirely too much of the drug. “Sp-splendid, Annchen! Solves the problem in one fell swoop, eh?”

  There was a brief and horrified silence in the parlor for the space of a breath, or the length of time it took for everyone to draw theirs in. Peter looked stunned, as if he had been poleaxed.

  Dolph leaned against the door, his eyes meeting Magda’s. He would be no help, for he started laughing as if it were a fine joke upon everyone. “Oh, Cuz, you should have taken my offer seriously—there’s no escape for you now!”

  The color rose in Anna’s cheeks. The longer this went on, Magda realized, the more hideously embarrassing for all. She raised her voice, commanding, “Enough! Enough of this! What are we thinking, to even entertain such a mad notion as this! Marriage is not a matter of convenience, something to solve a temporary reversal of our plans!”

  “Well, I can’t think it would be all that disastrous,” Hansi insisted, even more glassy-eyed as the laudanum took deeper effect. “He’s a good trusty man and she could do worse!”

  “Hansi!” Magda hissed. “Don’t make it worse! Doctor Keidel, did you have any notion it would affect him like this?”

  “Not any in the world,” Doctor Keidel returned with suave amusement. “But it does make for a more than usually interesting house call. I bid you good evening all. And if there is a wedding resulting from this, I will be enormously disappointed if I am not invited.”

  “See the doctor out,” Magda ordered Dolph through tight lips. She directed a quelling look at her nephews, then took in Anna and Peter with another. “Now, you two, go into the garden, and sort out in privacy what you want to do about this ridiculous notion. And if you come back to the house and agree with me that it is a ridiculous notion, no one will ever say another word about it. Does everyone understand?”

  Anna, her face scorched from blushing, looked across at Peter. “Will you join me in the garden, Mr. Vining?” She held out her hand, and like a sleepwalker, Peter offered her his arm. Everyone else, even the boys, murmured some kind of obedient assent to Magda’s command and fled; all but Hansi, who lay on the chaise with an absurdly cheerful expression on his face.

  As soon as the garden door closed, Magda shook her head, “Oh, Hansi! Whatever possessed her to make such an offer! And for you to approve? That will just make it worse, especially if he doesn’t wish to marry! Now he can hardly turn it down without seeming most unchivalrous. And Anna—she will be so embarrassed!”

  “Not to worry,” Hansi answered cheerily, seemingly afloat on a high tide of laudanum, “He’s a decent, trustworthy sort—quite sensible. Think she likes him too, so that’s all right. Nothing like an old-fashioned arranged marriage, y’know! No matter that my little nun has arranged it herself! At his own pace, it would have taken him forever to get to the point!” He lay back on the chaise, but moved too abruptly for the comfort of his broken bones. “Ah, Goddamn, that hurts. ‘S better this way, Magda. Lise’ll be disappointed, though. I think she wanted a grand wedding at the new house. N’er mind. All her friends are here, and all the family gathered for the start of the drive. A splendid start for them, hey?”

&n
bsp; “I do hope so,” Magda answered, deeply pessimistic. She could see through the parlor window into the garden. Dusk filled it up like a cup, the bare tops of the oak trees brushed with the gold of the setting sun. Anna and Peter sat side by side on the children’s wooden swing, their backs to the windows.

  “What are they doing now?” Hansi asked, querulous with pain and frustration. “’Can’t see from here.”

  “They’re just talking,” Magda answered with a sigh.

  Peter was too stunned to do anything more than what Ma’am Becker commanded. It was as if he had taken a fall from a horse, straight and flat onto the ground, all the air knocked out of his lungs by the impact. He had offered Miss Anna his elbow, and they walked sedately out of the house. That time of the afternoon the garden was silent but for the chatter of birds high in the oak branches. Anna went towards the swing, which was rocking a little at the end of its suspending ropes. Silently Peter held it steady as she sat on it, then moved enough to one side so there was room for both to sit, squeezed closely together on the wooden seat. Marriage? Had she really suggested such a thing as a practical solution to the situation they all faced in Hansi’s injury? Such a life-changing step suggested in such a calm and modest manner; it beggared his imagination. Him? Marry Anna Richter? It would be like suddenly adopting a fierce hawk as a pet, expecting it to sit tamely on your finger like a parakeet.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Vining,” she blurted suddenly. “It seemed like a very sensible notion. I spoke without thinking, or considering your own feelings.” He could see the color rising in her cheek, between the wings of dark brown hair over her ears and the high neck of her practical day dress.

  “Well . . . it doesn’t happen every day to a fellow,” he answered. “Although ‘tis said that Queen Victoria was the one that put the question to Prince Albert. The rank, you see. She outranked him. ‘Course,” he added with a laugh which rang a little awkward, “it wasn’t as if he could say no. She was the Queen and all. Probably came out as an order, even if she didn’t really mean it that way.”