"Well! That embarrassment is luckily over!" said Albert, pushing a parcel of bank-notes into a bulky, worn-out pocket-book, which contained among other things a number of mercantile communications, unanswered yet in spite of their ancient date. "After all, she is a nice little woman; not over-bright--but that is in this case only an additional virtue. I really think I could deny my nature and marry the little Samaritan. Perhaps it would not be so bad. Who knows? There may, after all, be somewhere within me the germ of a most excellent steady citizen, which only needs the warmth of a domestic hearth to sprout merrily. The thing is problematic, I admit, but not impossible, for all that I see myself walking soberly of a Sunday, by the side of my wife, through the fields, listening to the quarrels among the sparrows and the complaints of my better half against the extortionate bills of butchers and bakers, while before us walk two young citizens of the world who bear a slight resemblance to myself, and behind us, in a little wagon drawn by a maid of all works, a shrill little voice is heard, which furnishes unmistakable evidence of my wife's admirable qualities! Oh!..."
Albert groaned as if he had sprained his foot on a real stone during this imaginary promenade. He started up from the sofa, and walked thoughtfully up and down in the room, folding his hands behind his back. "The plats are ready," he said, stopping before his drawing-board; "Anna Maria has paid me; I have nothing more to do here, and the baroness' question, when I thought I would leave, was clear enough. How I hate this proud, good-for-nothing race--all of them, not one excepted, not even the beautiful, high-nosed Helen, who always looks at me with such cool contempt in her big, cold eyes; and least of all my noble friend Felix, who I think would be delighted if he could cut me out with Marguerite. If I could but play you all a good trick, that you should think of me your life long! If I could, for instance, discover the heir to Stantow and Baerwalde in the person of--Ah! There is the rub! In whose person?"
"I can do something with the letters I have, but not much. As yet I cannot even frighten excellent Anna Maria with them. If I could only have a chance of examining that big chest of Mother Claus'! It is a fixed idea of mine that there must be something to be gotten there. But I have in vain reconnoitred the whole house; I have in vain watched it by day and by night, to find a moment when the old witch should leave it for a moment--she sits there like a toad in the rock.--Aproposof that amiable young man! I thought of making him the Pretender,nolens volens, for he is too stupidly honest to look at the whole thing as a merry, and at the same time profitable, masquerade. It is wonderful how honest people are when they have all they want! The best way to get rid of thieves would be to pension every one of them. And this Stein is not even so lucky as that. He cannot have any money--why else would he plague himself with these boys? He would be just the man to spend a fortune handsomely. And so far everything seems to fit exactly. He has the requisite age; he has told me himself that he has never known his mother, or--his father excepted--any other relative. And, besides that, he has a striking likeness to the older line of the Grenwitz family. I only wish I were he, that is to say, with my brains added to what he has ..."
A timid knock at the door interrupted Albert's meditations. As upon his "Come in!" no one entered, he went to open the door. A little peasant boy, fair-haired and bare-footed, stood there, looking at him with his stupid eyes wide open.
"Whom do you want, my boy?"
"Are you the candidate here?"
"To be sure!" said Albert, always ready for any fun or joke.
"Mother Claus sends me----"
"Who?" "Mother Claus sends me----"
"Come in, little one," said Albert, taking the boy by the hand and locking the door when they were both inside.
"What does Mother Claus want of me?"
"Mother Claus is dying, and sends me to tell the candidate to come and see her."
The boy breathed deep when he had relieved himself of the fearful burden of his message. Albert took up his cap.
"I'll come directly. You run on and tell her I am coming directly. And look here: If anybody in the house asks you whom you come from, just say you have delivered your message. Here is a groschen, and now make haste to get home again."
The boy scampered off, proud of Albert's generous present, and of course utterly forgetful of the order to run home. When he had reached the courtyard, he sat quietly down on the fountain of the Naiad, to decide at leisure whether he should buy at once the whole world, or for the present only a bullfinch, which another boy had offered him that morning.
He might have been sitting there a quarter of an hour when he fell fast asleep, tired as he was from running about all day. Thus Oswald found him when he returned from a lonely walk. As the sight of the ragged sleeping boy on the edge of the fountain looked picturesque, he walked up to him. The boy started up and rubbed his eyes in bewilderment.
"How do you get here, boy?" asked Oswald.
"Mother Claus sent me!" said the boy, not knowing at that moment whether he had delivered his message or not.
"What is the matter with Mother Claus?" asked Oswald, who at once suspected that something must have happened to his old friend.
"Mother Claus sends me," repeated the boy; "she is dying, and sends me to tell the candidate to come and see her!"
Oswald did not stop to hear more. He thought of the poor old woman, in whom he had from the beginning taken so warm an interest, now lying on her deathbed, perhaps alone, helpless, and no kind hand to smooth her pillow--and he hurried as fast as he could through the small gate on the road that led to the tenants' cottages, taking the same road on which Albert had passed a quarter of an hour before....
Albert had slipped through the small gate and the garden as soon as the boy was out of sight. No one had seen him leave the château. The family had gone out, and he thought Oswald was in his room.
"Fortes fortuna juvat," he thought as he was running along under the willow trees. "They are all out in the fields now. The old woman could not have died at a more suitable hour. I only hope she is dead when I get there, for I do not want to have to explain...."
He had reached the village in a few minutes, but he avoided the main street, running along the little gardens behind the cottages, till he came to Mother Claus' hut. Here he jumped over a low fence and entered through the open back door into the passage. He listened. Nothing was stirring. He only heard the ticking of the large Black Forest clock in Jake's room, and from the village street the laughter of a couple of children--Mother Claus' foster-children--who were wrestling in the sand to enjoy the evening sun.
"Now I hope to heavens there won't be some benevolent soul in the room," murmured Albert, cautiously pushing open the door which led into the old woman's room.
He entered on tip-toe. It was quite dark in the low, small chamber. Albert's first glance fell upon the chest, which was safe in its place in the corner; his next upon the old woman. She was sitting in the large arm-chair, "in which Baron Oscar had died." She had dressed herself in her Sunday costume, her oaken stick was by her side--one might have imagined she had been ready to go to Fashwitz to church, and had fallen asleep a little before undertaking the long, long journey.
"Is that you, young master?" she said, with trembling voice, and raising her head with the snow-white hair to look at the door. "Come nearer, quite near, that I may touch you. Where are you? It is all dark around me; I cannot see you. Is not the moon shining through the trees? Do you hear the nightingale sing? Listen! How sweet! how beautiful! Oscar, you must not abandon Lizzie; she will cry till she blinds her beautiful eyes; and you must tell Harald not to worry poor Marie so much, else she'll go out into the black night. Good-by, dear child!--Yes, I'll burn everything; it is all safe in the chest. Mother Claus cannot read, but the right man will come at the right time!"
The head of the poor woman fell on her bosom. Albert thought she was dead. He went to the chest, raised the heavy top, and hastily searched the contents. There were women's dresses, which could not have belonged to Mother Claus--city-made dresses, such as young ladies wore twenty-five years ago! withered bouquets, faded ribbons, a few simple articles of jewelry; a string of red corals; a little gold cross on a black velvet ribbon. All this might be of very great interest to somebody else; but Albert pushed it impatiently aside. And still he went on searching and found not what he looked for. At last--there! at the very bottom of the chest, in a corner, and hid under a black silk dress, quite a parcel--letters, documents--there they were! He slipped it into the pocket of his coat; he took with both arms what he had pulled out and stuffed it in again, pell-mell, as it came, closed the lid; and as he rose from his knees, was not that somebody coming? In an instant he was at the little window that looked upon the small garden behind the house. He opened it, he squeezed himself through the narrow aperture with a rapidity which would have done credit to an experienced housebreaker, crept on all fours through the currant-bushes, leaped the low fence, and disappeared amid the golden waves of a field of rye.
Just as Albert thus accomplished his retreat through the window, Oswald entered the room, breathless with haste. He feared he had come too late; he knelt down by the side of the old woman and chafed her withered, cold hands in his own.
And this touch seemed to restore the dying woman once more to life. She raised herself, and placing her hand on his head, she said, with a voice which sounded as if it came already from beyond the grave: "The Lord bless thee and preserve thee! The Lord give thee peace!"
"Amen," said Oswald.
The hands of the old woman fell gently on her knees. Oswald looked up. The light of the setting sun fell through the low window upon her face; it looked as if it were spiritualized in the rosy light. But the rosy light vanished, and the gray evening looked upon the pale face of the dead.
Oswald closed her eyes. From the other side of the house came the ticking of the big clock, from the street the laughing and shouting of the children at play.--What does life know of death? what death of life? What does eternity know of either?
Next morning before breakfast Mr. Timm was gone. He had asked the baron to send him to the nearest town from which he could take post-horses. The baron asked him hospitably why he was in such a hurry, and if he would not stay a few days to recover from his arduous labors? But Albert pretended to have received an important order--the postman had indeed brought him a letter--and the baron ordered the taciturn coachman to get ready his heavy bays. Mr. Timm bade all a brief farewell and drove off. Nobody missed him--nobody, with the exception of the little Genevese. But she shed her tears in the retirement of her chamber, and the company saw nothing of her grief but her eyes red from weeping, which she intended to explain by a pretended headache, if anybody should inquire. But no one inquired.
They all had enough to do with themselves! All were fully occupied with what was nearest to their own hearts.
The death of the old woman was another blow to Oswald. Again he had lost one of the few beings in whom he was interested. It seemed as if his troubled mind was never to have any peace--as if the last bright light was to fade on his sky, and deep night was to surround him on all sides. He had seen Mother Claus but rarely, and yet it had always been under such peculiar circumstances as to make in each case a deep and lasting impression on his mind; he felt as if he had lost an old relative, whose tender affections he had rewarded with indifference and ingratitude. When he was last at her hut with Albert, he had determined not to lose sight again of the old woman, to ask her if he could help her, to inquire if anything could be done for her. She had thought of him in her last hour, while he had not had a minute for her in all these days! She had wished to bless him before she died--what had he ever done to deserve such a blessing?--It was of little use now that he provided for her funeral, that he and Bruno accompanied her to her last resting-place when they carried the simple coffin on a farm wagon to the graveyard at Fashwitz. It was of no use that he wrote to Grunwald, ordering a small marble tablet, so that her grave might not be too soon obliterated. But he thought how she would have thanked him during her lifetime for the smallest part of all the trouble he took for her now that she was dead!
Was it because he had not deserved it, that the blessing was not fulfilled? The peace which she had implored for him with the last breath of her lips would not come to his heart. Like a desperate man he struggled with the maddening passion which had overwhelmed him of a sudden like a fierce hurricane, but every day convinced him but more and more of his inability to resist. He spent daily several hours in the company of the beautiful girl; she met him with her kindly smile on her proud lips as soon as the bright summer morning had ended the short night, which yet to him seemed so long! At table he sat opposite to her; her lessons by his side, and a hundred other occasions, inevitable in so small a family at a country place, brought him again and again in contact with the lovely one. He himself called his passion not love, but friendship, deep interest--he tried to persuade himself that he would have felt the same friendship, the same interest, if his relations to Melitta had remained unchanged,--if accident had never revealed to him Melitta's image in a new light Oswald would have been the first to discover that it spoke neither of prudence nor of loyalty to make deceitful accident the judge of the weal or woe of a woman he loved so dearly, and that all these boastful reasonings were nothing more than cunning sophisms of a wild passion; he would have discovered this in any one else; but we lack only too frequently that prudence and loyalty in our own affairs which we always have ready for others, and to think and talk wisely and to act foolishly are, it is well known, different things, which still can very well go hand in hand.
It is true that an impassioned heart could not very well resist being touched by so much beauty, grace, and mind combined in one person. All who came in contact with Helen felt the charm, the wonderful charm, she possessed; it seemed almost impossible not to take at once part for or against her with enthusiasm, so that even in the servants' hall lively scenes occurred, in which her attractions were discussed. The taciturn coachman would growl out that all was not gold that glitters, and the good old cook would reply that the angels of course never came to visit bad and envious men; then followed an angry and unprofitable discussion about bad men in general and in particular, which led to strange and sharp sayings on both sides, while the master and his family were handled without gloves, and much was said down stairs that would have struck horror into the hearts of the company up stairs. Thus they were pretty well agreed in those lower regions that Baron Felix had not come to Castle Grenwitz for amusement only, and his valet hinted that some people could say a good deal about that, if discretion was not the first duty of a good servant. He only desired to add, that his master was apt to carry out whatever he undertook, and that, in his opinion, there was not a young lady in this world who could resist his master for any length of time--an assertion which called forth most violent opposition on the part of the ladies present.
What these people discovered, Oswald's eye, sharpened a hundred-fold by love, could not overlook. He saw daily how the baron made every effort to win his fair cousin's love, how he brought into play all the skill he had acquired in a thousand intrigues on the smooth floor of brilliant salons in the capital, all the cleverness with which Nature had lavishly endowed him, and all the advantages he enjoyed as a near relative. He could not fail to see that the baroness sustained these efforts with wise discretion in every useful way, seconding Felix as indefatigably as ably. He would say: No! or remain silent, when Bruno, after dinner or during a walk, would tell him, with angry face, of some new impudence of "that ape Felix," but he knew very well that the boy had seen or heard right, and his only consolation was that Helen's pride would never consent to a union with a man so totally unworthy of her hand.
As for Miss Helen, she went her quiet way, apparently looking neither to the right nor the left, only she had become still more reserved in her manner, and more sparing of her smiles. She also felt perfectly well that she would have to stand alone in the struggle which was impending; that she would appeal in vain to the heart of a cold, selfish mother, the weak mind of an old father, or the courtesy of a frivolous, reckless man like Felix, and that she would have to rely on no one but herself. But this consciousness, which would have overwhelmed any other girl of Helen's age, only served to rouse and to inflame the courage of this high-hearted creature, in whom the whole power of the family seemed to be concentrated, only in a nobler and purer form. The reconciliation which had taken place between her and her mother had only been apparent. Two persons are never more strongly opposed to each other than when they aim at different ends, and yet are equally well endowed with strength of will and powers of endurance. There was no permanent union possible between the baroness, who knew and pursued only worldly purposes, and her daughter, who followed an ideal which might have been exaggerated, but was always lofty and pure. Helen spoke freely of this in the letters, which she wrote more frequently now than formerly, to her dearest and most intimate friend, Miss Mary Burton. "Dearest Mary," she said in one of them, "how often have you accused your fate, which loaded you with riches but robbed you of all--parents, brothers and sisters, and even cousins--all those friends of both sexes, which nature herself gives us for our way through life! But, believe me, dear girl, there is a sadder fate than yours. The melancholy you feel when you think of your loneliness in the world has something sweet about it. How often have you spoken to me of your brother Harry, whom you lost in the fall vigor of early youth, and of your sister Hetty, who died a mere bud. You told me then that they were not and could never be dead for you, because they lived brighter and fairer in your memory. You said that the shades of the departed were everywhere hovering around you, and that you felt far happier in their society than among the cold, selfish men of this world. Oh, surely life is not the first of earthly gifts, but love is. To live without love is useless; love without life can still be sublime. Your relatives are dead, but they live in you; my relatives live, but they are dead for me. It is a sad word, darling Mary, but I will not blot it out again, for it is true; and we have pledged each other to conceal nothing, even though the confession be ever so painful. Yes, they are dead for me, my relatives, and although I would give half of my life to call them back to life, good wishes can do nothing here. Who lives for us? Surely only those in whose hearts we can always find an asylum, to protect us against every grief that oppresses us and against every doubt that distresses us--those who wish only our happiness, and do not find it in the fulfilment of their own wishes, in the gratification of their own desires. And yet, this is the case with my relatives. Can I open my heart to them? Must I not always fear to offend them if I speak what I think? Do they care for my wishes? Do they not rather distress me with their plans and suggestions, which make the blood curdle in my veins? To be sure, my dear old papa--he would not abandon me if matters came to the worst; but, great Heavens, is it not bad enough to have to fear a worst? Ah, Mary, I cannot tell you how strange, how painful even the spirit that reigns in this house is to me; how I long to be back at school, where, if the outer world was closed to us, a fairer and a richer world was open to us in our dreams, and especially in our cordial friendship! Here I have no one whom I could admit into this inner world, no one but a boy, who, of course, cannot understand me, and a man whom I could love if he were my brother, but from whom I am parted by an impassable gulf. You know of whom I speak. I will not conceal from you that of late I have become more deeply interested in this man than I should ever have thought possible--a confession which may challenge your scorn, but which I owe to you, notwithstanding, from the sacred nature of our covenant. He stands alone in the world like yourself; his mother he has never known; his father died years ago, and he never had brother or sister. He is quite young yet, but great hearts live fast in a little while, and he must have seen and suffered much. There is a shadow of melancholy on his brow, and in his large, dark blue eyes, which is irresistibly touching to me; at times his lips quiver with pain, so that I would give anything if I could go up to him and say: Tell me what pains you, perhaps I can help you, and if I cannot do that, I can at least sympathize with you. You know, dear Mary, that I am a thoroughbred aristocrat, and that I have an innate antipathy to all that is common and plebeian. We have both of us grown up in the conviction that the lower classes lack not merely the nobility of birth, but also the nobility of thought, and that we cannot count, in them, upon an appreciation of what is best and highest in the world. I must tell you now that I have changed my views in this respect somewhat since I have come back to Grenwitz; that I have at least found how this rule also has its exceptions. Stein is such an exception. I never yet heard a word from his lips that would betray the plebeian, but, on the contrary, many that were spoken from my soul, and that found a loud echo in my heart. He speaks with more music in his voice than I ever heard before, so that I often try for hours afterwards to recall to my mind the manner and modulation with which he said one or the other thing. There is an indescribable charm for me in his sweet, melodious voice. I always felt as if men were speaking from the heart, and I could say, after a few words: This man has a good heart, and that man has a bad heart. And with Stein this proves to be correct. I have seen many proofs of his good heart. Thus, there died a few days ago an immensely old woman in the village, who was once upon a time housekeeper at the château, and drew a little pension from papa. Nobody took any notice of her except Stein, and he took care of her burial, and accompanied, together with Bruno, her remains to the grave-yard. They have blamed him for that at the house here, and I had to hear very heartless remarks about it; especially from a certain person, who ought to thank God if she ever thinks of a kind act, much less does one. But I will not honor this person by saying anything more about her. I have determined that she shall henceforth no longer exist for me, and hence I will not even speak of her any more...."
This letter, in which Miss Helen spoke so unreservedly about the persons by whom she was surrounded, never was answered, for it never reached its destination.
It was in the afternoon. The old baron was napping in the sitting-room. He sat in his large rocking-chair; the newspaper he had been reading had fallen from his feeble, withered hand. He looked very much worsted, like a really old man who had not many years to live, and whose life might be very suddenly ended by a trifling attack. Anna Maria, no doubt, thought so as she sat opposite to him in her accustomed seat, looking at him long and attentively, apparently lost in deep thought. Now she rose and spread a thin handkerchief over the sleeper's face. Then she looked at the clock on the mantel-piece. It was nearly four, the hour at which, according to the unchanging rules of the house, coffee was served--in the garden, if the weather permitted it. The baroness was on the point of rousing her husband, but she reconsidered, went through the open door into the garden, and asked the servant who was carrying the coffee if Baron Felix had been called already?--Not yet, ma'am! Then go up stairs and tell him I beg he will come at once to see me, and--wait! tell mademoiselle she need not come to help to coffee; I'll do it myself; she had better stay in the linen-room.--And, what was it? Oh yes! You need not tell the others yet that coffee is ready!
The man went on his errands. Anna Maria passed the garden-house and entered a long, perfectly shady avenue of beech-trees, which led from the lawn to a copse, in which an old ruined chapel was standing. She seemed to have forgotten entirely that she had sent for Felix, for she went on and on, her eyes fixed upon the ground, till she reached the end of the avenue and the little chapel.
It was a sweet, pleasantly melancholy place. Very old trees of gigantic size overhung it with their broad leafy branches, so that not a ray could pierce. The ground was covered with thick moss; long, luxuriant grass was growing between the broken stones; the crevices in the old walls were all covered with dark-green ivy, and here and there a tall blooming shrub rose from the ruins. Upon the weather-beaten stone cross in the empty window sat a little bird and sang. That was the only sound heard far and near. It seemed only to make the stillness around more deeply felt.
A lover of solitude would have been delighted with the place. But the baroness hardly raised her eyes from the ground to look hastily around. She had at all times little eye for the rays of the sun that came trembling through thick foliage, for dark shadows and other features in a beautiful landscape, and now her mind was preoccupied with very different thoughts. She sat down on a stone bench immediately under the empty window frame in which the little bird was singing, took a letter from her pocket and began to read it once more.
It was the letter which Helen had written that morning, in the belief that her mother's assurance she would never inquire about her correspondence was to be relied on. Fully trusting in the sacredness of letters, she had given it to her maid, with orders to carry it to the kitchen, where the postman was refreshing himself with a cup of coffee. The maid had met the baroness in one of the passages, and the latter had asked her whose letter that was? Upon her answer that her mistress had given it to her, the baroness had taken it with the remark, that she would give it herself to the postman when her own letters were sent down.
Thus Helen's letter had fallen into her mother's hands. It was an accident--one of those accidents which evil spirits seem to bring about, for the very purpose of confusing doubting minds still further, and of leading them more surely away from the right path. Without this accident it would probably never have occurred to the baroness that she might thus find a way to her daughter's heart. But her plan of marrying Helen to Felix had become a fixed idea in her mind, as it happens often with selfish and self-willed characters. The state of her husband's health seemed to her--justly or unjustly--very dangerous; Malte had from his birth been very delicate, and the over-anxious tenderness of his parents had made him still more so; thus it appeared to her more than probable that Felix might ere long be master at Grenwitz, and she thought it therefore wise policy to bind him to her interests as much as she could. At first she had looked in this to Helen's advantage almost as much as to her own, and found it very convenient that her and her daughter's interest could be so pleasantly combined. Felix seemed to be made to become the son-in-law of an imperious mother-in-law. He was trifling, yielding, averse to business, and always disposed to let things go as they chose to go, if he had but money or credit enough. The baroness did not remember that such men are the hardest to manage, because reckless frivolity and intense selfishness can very well go hand in hand, and that these men are ever ready to sacrifice all who oppose their selfish desires. She thought she had nothing to fear from Felix. He had won her whole heart, as far as she had any heart, by his courteous, accommodating manner, and his ever ready: As you like it, dear aunt--do you settle that, please, dear aunt!
All the greater was her concern about Helen. She could not conceal from herself that all her attempts to draw her daughter nearer to herself had so far been fruitless. Of course, she blamed only Helen's "childish disposition" and her "overwrought notions" for the failure, but that did not change the matter itself. And now she had to see, moreover, that Helen had evidently more confidence in her father than in herself, that she was more warmly attached to Bruno than to her brother Malte, and that she treated Oswald, and even Mr. Timm, more courteously than her cousin. Felix had laughed when the baroness told him what she had noticed; he had even said it was a good sign. The ruder the better! was the ex-lieutenant's doctrine, which he accompanied with a gallant comparison between horses and girls strongly smacking of the guard-house. But the baroness had the habit of trusting her own eyes, and her own eyes confirmed daily the correctness of her observation. At last Felix also had begun to feel less sure of success. Emily's words on that night had pierced his self-complacency like a barbed arrow. Jealousy has hawk's eyes. Emily knew that only the love of another could have produced such a change in Oswald, and that wonderful instinct which in women more than replaces the slow logic of men, had in an instant revealed to her that her rival could be no one else but the beautiful Helen. Felix, in his rash manner of trying to get rid of a troublesome thought, had at once communicated the matter to the baroness, and she had meditated on it till she had come to the conclusion that Emily's suggestion was too probable not to be thoroughly investigated.
Just then accident had placed Helen's letter in her hand. This letter, intended only for her daughter's most intimate friend, would probably furnish her the key to her daughter's heart, and confirm or destroy her suspicion. That, this key in her hand became a thief's tool--what did it matter? She must have certainty at any price. And has not a mother the right to know her daughter's secrets? And if this daughter, as she feared, was going astray on a dangerous path, was it not the mother's sacred duty to bring her back by any means in her power?
Thus the baroness had tried to quiet her conscience. Man never is in want of excuses for an act which he has determined to commit at all hazard.
And there she sat now on the stone bench by the old walls of the chapel, with the little bird merrily twittering above, and the letter, the unlucky letter, in her hand. She knew it almost by heart. The fruit from the tree of knowledge, which he had so wickedly stolen, was bitter, very bitter! She had never loved her daughter; now she hated her daughter. It was true then! Her worst suspicions were confirmed. Black ingratitude the only return for all her kindness! Helen on the best terms with the two persons she hated most! Baron Grenwitz's only daughter in love with a hireling, a low-born person, who received wages and his board from her parents! For what meant, after all, those fine phrases about Oswald's goodness of heart, and the sympathy she felt for his secret sorrow? The baroness did not know much of the language of love; but she did know that indifference does not speak thus. It had come to this then! Helen wanted war! Well--war she should have. They would soon see who was the stronger--the mother or the daughter. Could she yield now? Let the disobedient child have her way? Sacrifice her long-cherished plans to a foolish girl's whims? No, and a thousand times, No!
But what was she to do? Try kindness once more, or drop the mask, and command where prayers had been of no avail? And above all, how much of the secret was she to tell Felix? Would his pride be roused if he saw how little Helen thought of him, how she despised him, in fact? Might he not draw back, and would not Helen then triumph after all?
Before the baroness could quite settle this point in her mind, she heard steps near by. She hastily folded up the letter and concealed it in the pocket of her dress.
It was Felix. He had found no one in the garden-house, and accidentally looking down the avenue, he had thought he saw the baroness at the other end.
"Ah! it is you," he said, as the baroness rose when he came near, "I really did not know if it was you. The coffee is waiting, but, like King Philip in the play, lonely and alone. Everybody seems to have slept too long, like myself."
"Sit down here, Felix," said the baroness; "the coffee can wait. We can talk here more at ease than over there."
"A charming secret place for a nice little rendezvous," replied Felix, laughing, and sitting down by the side of the baroness.
At that moment the little bird ceased to sing that had been sitting on the cross in the window, and flew into one of the trees. The pale face of a boy, framed in dark curls, showed itself for a moment in the opening, and looked down, but disappeared instantly at the sight of the two on the stone bench.
"You are still always ready for a joke, dear Felix," said the baroness.
"Still!" replied Felix, "what has happened that I should cry? I suppose you cannot forget what I told you the other night? Pshaw! I have long since recovered from the fright; it was a false alarm, you may believe me."
"I wish I could share your confidence, dear Felix; but I have my good reasons for differing with you on that point. I have observed Helen more carefully since then, and I cannot get rid of the idea that there is something in the suggestion."
"But, pardon me, dear aunt. You have a marvellous talent for seeing everything in dark colors. It was a childish notion of the little Breesen; she wanted to annoy me--voilà tout. I cannot imagine that Helen would prefer a schoolmaster to myself. Why, it would be ridiculous,horriblementridiculous," said the ex-lieutenant, and looked with pleasure at his patent boots.
"And suppose Helen should not forget herself so far--or suppose it should be only a child's caprice, to vanish with the next moment, are you so well pleased with her manner towards yourself?"
"She will change her manner when she finds I am in earnest."
"And if she does not change it?"
"Well, then, we are, heaven be thanked, not married yet," said Felix, lost in admiration of his boot, and hardly knowing what he was saying.
"Then we had better break off our conversation," said the baroness, rising; "if you can speak with such indifference of the failure of a plan which, I think, we both of us look upon with no small interest, it is hardly worth while to discuss it any further."
"But, my dearest aunt," said Felix, starting up and kissing the baroness' hand, "you are really in an awful humor today. How can you be so offended at a word, which did not mean anything at all, 'pon honor? It just slipped out so. You know my tongue often says things for which I should by no means like to be held responsible. Sit down again, pray! You were saying that Helen's manner towards me might not change. My solemn answer is: I shall many her nevertheless. Those things come all right when one sits in the carriage and is off for the wedding tour; at first tears, then sobs, then pouting, then a little smile, and----"
"Enough," said the baroness, "you are an incorrigible wag, who----"
"Succeeds wherever he wants to succeed. And therefore let your scruples go, and give us our coffee or it will be cold."
"Not quite so fast," said the baroness; "what would you advise now?"
"What I have always advised. Since I am not allowed to have anything to do with the matter myself, you had better tell Helen: You marry your cousin Baron Felix Grenwitz, and moreover within so and so many days! That is settled! Selah!"
"Are you in earnest?"
"In full earnest! When are you going to give your great ball?"
"Day after to-morrow."
"Good! that is a capital opportunity to make our engagement public. Just tell Helen: If you are not Felix's betrothed by Thursday evening, you march back to school on Friday morning. You will see that will settle it."
"I am afraid the threat will have the opposite effect. They have spoilt Helen in Hamburg. I believe she had rather go back to-day than Friday."
"Eh bien!Then send the little obstinate damsel to Grunwald, to the model institute of Miss Bear. The little Breesen has been brought up there, and she told me the other day it was rather a kind of penitentiary than a boarding-school; but the harder it is the more effective--I mean the threat. For I will be hanged ifma chère cousinelets matters go to such an extremity--pardon me, dear aunt, I know you do not like such strong expressions."
"It is certainly a very bad habit of yours," said the baroness, rising. Felix followed her example.
"Which I shall try to lay aside to please you," he added, offering his arm to the baroness.
"One thing more," said the latter, pausing a moment, "do you believe Grenwitz will consent?"
"If I believe it?" cried Felix, laughing in a manner which was by no means flattering for the poor old gentleman, "if I believe it?Ma foi, chère tante, has not my most worthy uncle been nearly twenty years under your orders? How long is it since I have the honor of serving under you? A few weeks, and I think I have learnt to obey pretty well already!"
"You are a flatterer," said the baroness, graciously, "but nobody can be angry with you."
And the worthy pair went off arm in arm.
When the voices could no longer be heard, the boy's face became visible once more in the open window. It was even paler than before. The boy threatened the two with a gesture of his arms, and his lips moved as if they were murmuring a grim malediction. Then, when the two had disappeared out of sight, he let himself down upon the bench where they had been sitting. By the bench on the thick moss lay a badly folded letter, which the baroness had dropped from her pocket. The boy picked it up, and when he saw that it was in Helen's handwriting he pressed it to his lips with passionate tenderness. Then he concealed it carefully in his breastpocket, looked once more cautiously around, and the next moment he had disappeared in the bushes.
When the ex-lieutenant's cunning valet had spoken of the irresistible power of his master in all love affairs, the fair sex of the kitchen had cried out against him as uttering an insult to them all. But the man of much experience had smiled mysteriously, leaning back in his chair, after the manner of his master, and looking askant, but with a most expressive twinkle of the eye at one of the ladies, who had shown the deepest moral indignation, and the highest degree of eloquence in the unprofitable discussion. At this glance pretty Louisa had suddenly turned very red and become silent, so that she attracted the notice even of the taciturn coachman, who gravely repeated his former remark, that all was not gold that glitters. Thereupon pretty Louisa had begun to cry, and the old cook had risen and openly charged the valet with an unfair attempt to injure a poor girl by vile insinuations and "hateful looks." The adroit fellow, seeing that he had gone too far, immediately retraced his steps and assured them that his remarks had not been intended for anybody present, and that the twinkling of his eye was perfectly accidental. This very loyal and perfectly parliamentary explanation had finally restored peace in the company assembled around the kitchen fire.
Unfortunately, however, matters were exactly as the great man had suggested--betraying, it is true, the secrecy which was due to his master as a faithful servant, and which he was disposed to claim as a special merit of his own. Baron Felix had the bad habit--bad for himself and bad for his valet--of falling in love with every pretty girl whom he met on his way through life, although it might be only for a few days, hours, or even minutes, and to avail himself of every possible opportunity for an intrigue. Thus he had not been twenty hours at the château before he had found out that mademoiselle and pretty Louisa were the two persons who might help him kill time at this tiresome place, and during his troublesome courtship. Albert, his old comrade in many a similar heroic affair, when they were both cadets, had given him information about mademoiselle, and Jean, the valet, had received orders to see how the land lay about pretty Louisa. Albert had considered for a moment, thinking it might not be amiss to favor Felix, so as to make his intimacy with mademoiselle a pretext for himself, if he should wish to break with her at some future time. But finally the hatred he felt against his former comrade, the lucky fool, and a kind of jealousy he felt most unaccountably, had carried the day. He assured Felix that mademoiselle had told him herself of her positive engagement "to a candidate of divinity," heaven knows where, probably in Grunwald; that he had tried himself to get into her good graces, but as he had failed, he was quite sure any effort to succeed with the "black-eyed Genevese girl" would be fruitless.
Felix was not generally the man to be intimidated by such suggestions, but he was quite willing to abandon this enterprise, as his experienced scout had reported to him, as the result of his reconnaissance in the other direction, that there success was easy and sure. Don Giovanni Felix had thereupon opened the trenches in due form, and was, of course, by no means surprised when, a few days later, the little fortification surrendered at discretion.
And yet it was by no means easy to carry out a gallant adventure in the château. It had such a labyrinth of passages, so many large and small staircases, which landed you suddenly in stories to which you had no intention of going, and so many doors which all looked alike, and made you enter any room but your own, that one who was not perfectly at home there was almost sure to go astray. Felix had paid the penalty of being a stranger, and had lost his way more than once by night, succeeding in regaining his room only after much trouble and hours of fruitless efforts. He preferred, therefore, to lie in wait for his little beauty in the garden, where shady walks and discreet bowers offered many a safe place for rendezvous, and which was as accessible to the denizens of the lower regions as to the great people of the château.
Thus he had stolen out this night also, and was waiting for his poor little victim in one of the bosquets, from which one could see the offices as well as the lower windows of the château. The great clock struck twelve--the hour fixed for the rendezvous. The moon was shining brightly; the dewdrops on leaves and flowers glittered in its rays; Felix could see by his watch that the castle clock was a quarter of an hour behind time. The lights in the château had disappeared one by one; only in two windows of the lower story towards the garden the light of a lamp was still shining through the red curtains. Felix saw the vague outlines of a figure at regular intervals appear, and then disappear again--evidently the occupant was walking up and down in the room. Then she must have sat down again at the piano, for single notes were heard, like the notes of a bird, who tries to sing his songs as he dreams in the moonlight; then they mingled into full accords, and at last Beethoven's gloriousSonate pathétiquepoured forth its rich melodies, as if angels were singing while they hovered at midnight, with outspread wings, over the earth, gathering all the joys and all the sorrows of this world in their godlike hearts, and pouring them forth in one solemn anthem full of unspeakable sadness and heavenly sweetness. It would have been strange if Felix had really dared to lift up his eyes and to raise his hands towards the pure, chaste girl who was playing, without some feeling of remorse; for as he stood there, leaning against a column with an urn on top, and listening, he felt his own want of purity. He was not altogether without feeling; he could even become enthusiastic about what was really great and beautiful, although his enthusiasm did not last but a few moments, and vanished like a pretty bright soap-bubble, with its thousand varying hues, at the first rising of a frivolous thought. Who knows but that, at that moment, he resolved to lead another life hereafter, and to lay aside his follies?--and he had such a very good opinion of himself that no doubt he thought it sufficient to resolve in order to succeed. He listened to the music with a vague sense of reverence. His knowledge of music told him that the Sonata could not have been played better, or with more expression; he whispered at one or two passages: Brava! brava! as if he had been in a concert-room. But Helen and Beethoven, virtue and music, and whatever else might at that moment have passed through his mind--all vanished in an instant, like a Fata Morgana, when his ear heard a stealthy step approaching. It came from another direction than that from which Felix expected his friend. But, then, pretty Louisa might have gone out of her way to avoid the walks which the moon lighted up with its bright light. The steps came nearer and nearer, and Felix, conceiving the original idea of playing hide and seek, stole back into the shrubbery. But what was his surprise when he saw, instead of pretty Louisa, Bruno glide past him! He could not help laughing at his mistake; but the next moment it occurred to him how this might endanger his rendezvous, and that it would probably be wiser to go back to the house. "Who knows how long the boy may loiter about here? may be he is in love, or he is crazy? He looks as if he might be either. Or he is moon-struck, and walks about here for a few hours. The rascal! He is always in my way; I have a great mind to give him a tangible proof of my friendly attachment for him. At all events I had better leave here. It is not too late yet to plead my love of moonlight for being out, but in a little while the excuse would hardly avail. I mean, however, to tell my excellent aunt of these night excursions of Mr. Stein's pupils."
Felix had nearly reached the house on his return without seeing Bruno, and was already hoping the boy might have left the garden, and his rendezvous might still be accomplished, when he suddenly caught sight of Bruno, just as he was crossing the lawn. The boy was sitting on a bench, his eyes fixed on Helen's window, from which music was still pouring forth; and so perfectly lost in devotion that he did not notice Felix till the latter was quite near him.
"What are you doing here so late at night?" asked Felix, whose anger sought vent at least in a few rough words; "I shall tell your aunt."
"Mind your own affairs," said Bruno, who had started up in the first surprise, advancing a few steps; but now, as he recognized Felix, whom he hated, he stopped in bold defiance.
"You are an impertinent boy," said Felix.
"And you a blackguard," replied Bruno, standing before him with folded arms.
"Who will punish you for your insolence," said Felix, boxing the boy's ears. Bruno staggered back a few steps. Felix saw, half frightened, how the boy's eyes began literally to burn; then he uttered a low, fierce cry from the depth of his throat--a great leap, like that of a leopard pouncing upon his victim, and the next moment Felix lay on the ground, and Bruno's powerful hands held his throat with an iron grip. Felix struggled desperately to shake off the boy and to rise again, but in vain. As often as he rose a little, trying to push Bruno aside with his arms, he felt his efforts paralyzed by superior strength, and the slender fingers enclosed his throat firmer and firmer.
"Let me go, Bruno," he groaned.
"Commend your soul to God, for you must die," Bruno growled.
Felix felt his strength giving way, while that of his adversary seemed to increase every moment. Deadly anguish fell upon him. He wanted to call for help, but his trembling lips could not utter a sound; he felt a low buzzing in his ears, which grew stronger and stronger; it became dark before his eyes, though millions of small stars were shooting about; fearful thoughts drifted like storm-laden clouds through his brains.--Suddenly, when the last glimmer of consciousness seemed to be extinguished, he felt the horrible burden leave his chest, and when he at last gathered strength to rise from the ground, he was alone. The moon was shining on the dark blue sky, the light in Helen's room had disappeared, the music was at an end, and Felix might have fancied his struggle with Bruno but a dream, if the reality had not been too well attested by the violent pains he felt in more than one part of his body, the sand that covered his clothes, and the ground turned up all around him.
With a heart filled with shame and rage he went back to the house, like a wolf who had attempted to surprise a flock, and had been driven back to the woods, bitten and wounded by a noble watch-dog.