At the same time a carriage drove rapidly through the deserted street in which Doctor Braun lived, and many faces appeared at the windows to see what it was. It was an elegant coach, with two high-bred horses, and a large coat-of-arms on the doors. On the box, by the side of the coachman, a servant in gorgeous livery was seated. The coach stopped before Doctor Braun's house, the servant jumped down to open the door, and a young lady stepped out. She walked rapidly through the little garden up to the door.
"Is Mrs. Braun at home?"
"I do not know," replied the maid, casting a shy glance at the velvet cloak and the charming white bonnet of the lady. "I will see."
"You need not go," said Sophie, who suddenly appeared, adorned with a long kitchen apron; "here I am."
With these words she hastened with open arms towards the lady, who, for her part, drew back the white veil and flew into her arms.
"Dearest Helen!"
"Dearest Sophie!"
Sophie drew her friend into the room, helped her to unbutton her cloak with trembling hands, took off her bonnet, and seizing her with both hands, she said:
"Well, now let me look at you in broad day-light, you darling; beautiful as usual, wondrously beautiful! But you look pale and haggard, it seems to me. Can I do anything for you? You see I have been at work in the kitchen."
Helen smiled. It was a melancholy smile, which made her dark eyes look still darker.
"I thank you, Sophie! I only wished to refresh myself by seeing you. Ah! you do not know how I have longed for you!"
Sophie was deeply touched by this unusual expression of Helen's feelings. But she was even more deeply touched by the sad tone of voice in which Helen said she had longed to see her. Such a confession, which the boarder at Miss Bear's institute would have been too proud ever to have made, was still stranger in the betrothed of Prince Waldenberg.
All this passed through Sophie's mind while she held Helen's hands in her own and looked deeper and deeper into her dark eyes.
"Poor Helen!" The words escaped her; she hardly knew what she was saying.
But the low, sympathetic words awakened in Helen's heart all the painful feelings which had kept her from sleeping during the night, so that she scarcely had more than an hour's rest near morning. Pity for herself, such as she had never known before, overcame her, tears filled her eyes, and she threw herself into Sophie's arms, hiding her beautiful pale face on her friend's bosom.
"For Heaven's sake, dearest Helen! what is the matter?" said Sophie, now seriously concerned. "I have never seen you so; I never thought I should see you so; and that now, when I thought your whole life was full of joy and glory!"
"Did you really think so?" asked Helen, raising herself and looking at Sophie fixedly with her large sorrowful eyes.
Sophie cast down her own before this look. She did not wish to say No; and she was too honest to say Yes. But she never hesitated long. Now or never was the moment to tell Helen all she had had on her heart for so long a time.
"Helen!" she said, looking up frankly and calmly with her deep blue eyes; "I cannot feign and will not feign for any one, and least of all for you whom I love dearly. Come, sweetheart, sit down by me on the sofa here, and let us talk like two sisters; and let us be sisters, if never again, at least for this hour. If you did not wish me to speak candidly to you, I think you would have hardly come to me, when you have so many brighter and greater friends. Am I right?"
"Go on!" said Helen, as if it were comfort and consolation merely to hear the voice of her friend.
"You ask me," continued Sophie, gathering courage as she spoke, "whether I really thought you were happy. I do not. You do not look like a happy woman. Your beautiful, pale face says No, even if your tongue should say Yes. I have often read in your face--I have read there long, long stories of which your lips did not say a word, and I will tell you what I read. Shall I do it?"
"Go on!" said Helen.
"I read on your brow that your mind is not satisfied with anything except what is great and extraordinary, and even not always with that; and I have read in your wondrously-beautiful eyes that your heart longs for love as much as human heart can wish for it. Thus, there has always been a struggle between your mind and your heart. You wish to rule and to love at the same time, and that cannot be done. Helen! love, true love--and there is no other love--must be humble; it bears all thing's and believes all things; it wants only to be one with the person loved, one in joy and one in sorrow Look, sweetheart! such love has fallen to my share, and therefore I know what I say. Franz and I have but one will: he wants to do what is right, and so do I; and even if our views ever should be apart, our hearts are always united. All joys are doubly great, and all sorrows are diminished by half. I felt that when my dear papa died. What would have become of me if Franz had not been there?"
"I had no one when my father died!" Helen said, sadly.
"I know it, darling; and often, when I thought how lonely you were, and how you did not have a soul to whom you could pour out your grief, I have thrown myself on Franz's bosom, who many a time could not imagine what brought me to him so suddenly and so passionately. You stand alone, even now when you are on the point of being married; and what is a thousand times worse, you are quite sure in your heart that it will always be so--that your husband will never be your friend, your brother, your beloved, before whom your soul lies open and clear, like a crystal-clear mountain lake, into which the sun looks brightly down to the very bottom."
"Never! never!" whispered Helen.
"I knew it," said Sophie, sadly; "but, Helen, if it is bad enough for you to marry the prince without loving him, it is still worse to become his wife while you are cherishing in your heart the image of another man."
Deep blushes flew over Helen's face as Sophie said these words in a firm voice, and at the same time looked at her so gravely and reproachfully with her large blue eyes.
"No, darling; don't be ashamed of having loved him. That is not what I blame you for. He is a man of uncommon attraction, and gifted by nature with all that can charm woman. I do not even blame you for loving him still. Who can cast aside true love so promptly? But, Helen, since it is so, do not marry the prince! You ought not to do it from respect for yourself, from respect for him, if he deserves respect."
"It is too late!" said Helen, hiding her face in her hands.
"Never too late!" exclaimed Sophie, passionately, and showing how deeply her heart was moved. "It is never too late to confess a mistake which must make you and him unspeakably unhappy. Do not misunderstand me, Helen! I do not speak in favor of that man who, if he ever really deserved your love, has long since forfeited all claim to it. I never was a friend of his; his so-called brilliant qualities never attracted me, because they were not founded upon goodness of heart; and, in my eyes, good old Bemperlein stands immeasurably higher than Oswald Stein. But, because he is not worthy of you, must you therefore marry a man for whom your heart feels nothing, however estimable he may otherwise be? Are there no other men in the world but Oswald and the prince? Oh, Helen! I wish I had the tongue of angels to touch your heart, so that you might humbly bow before the truth, and esteem all the splendor of the world as nothing in comparison with the happiness you would find in being true to yourself!"
Helen shuddered as if really one of the heavenly hosts were speaking to her.
"Oh, you are so good!" she said. "I wish I were like you."
"You can be so, if you but choose."
"But how can I escape? I have pledged my word! I cannot take it back!"
"Speak openly to the prince!" said Sophie, who thought such a remedy quite simple and natural.
"Rather die!" murmured Helen.
At that moment there came a knock at the door. The servant appeared with a note in his hand.
"A special messenger, ma'am, on horseback, with a note from the baroness."
Helen seized the note hastily.
"From mamma!"
She cast a glance at it and trembled.
"What is it, Helen?"
"Mamma has just heard from Grenwitz, that brother has been taken very ill. She must go back immediately!"
"Poor girl!" said Sophie. "How pale and frightened you look! Shall I go with you?"
"No, no!" said Helen. "You stay! I must go alone. Good-by, dearest Sophie! Good-by!"
Helen tore herself from Sophie's arms.
Sophie accompanied her to the carriage. She held her friend's hand firmly in her own, and said: "Let me hear from you, Helen! And, Helen, whatever you do, follow the voice of your warm heart; it is a better counsellor than your cold intellect!"
"I will do so," said Helen, already in the carriage; "you may rely upon it, I will do so. Good-by!"
The servant closed the door; the carriage dashed off. Sophie followed it with her eyes till it had turned the nearest corner, then she went slowly back to the house, her lovely face bent thoughtfully to the ground.
In a room in the second story of the Hotel de Russie, Under the Lindens, Berger was closeted that same afternoon with Director Schmenckel. They had had a long interview, and Mr. Schmenckel was just rising to say good-by. Berger rose likewise.
"You know exactly what you have to say?"
"I should think so," replied Mr. Schmenckel, and cleared his throat.
"Had we better go over it once more?"
"Might do no harm," replied Mr. Schmenckel.
"You will say, then, that you are sorry to have caused the princess so much trouble. You, yourself, would never have thought of it; but that man--how did you call him?"
"Timm!"
"----had led you on! Now you had found out that such proceedings were not worthy of an honest man, and, that you promised the princess, upon your honor, never to let another word of that whole affair escape your lips."
"My lips!" repeated Mr. Schmenckel, like a school-boy who repeats a lesson the teacher tells him to say after him.
"And as for that man, Timm, you will tell the princess not to trouble herself about him; but, if he should come and ask for money, to have him turned out of the house by the servants. As you do not intend to support him in any way, he cannot expect to make much out of the story. Have you got it all well in your head now?"
"I think it will do," said Mr. Schmenckel, meditatively.
"And, above all, you will accept no money from the princess, neither much nor little. Don't forget that; do you hear?"
"All right!" said the director, putting his hat on his head with a great show of resolution. "Adieu, professor!"
"Adieu!" said Berger, shaking hands. "Go and become once more the honest, upright man you have been heretofore."
"And now," said Berger to himself, when the door had closed after Schmenckel; "now the moment has come to pay an old debt." He went to a bureau and took from a drawer a small box of ebony and a medallion. Then he left the room and went down the passage till he came to a door, before which he stopped, listening for a moment. The key was in the key-hole. Berger noiselessly drew it out and knocked.
"Entrez!" cried a shrill voice.
Berger entered.
The man he came to see stood with his back to the door, before a looking-glass, busy finishing his toilet. He turned round, thinking it was a waiter. The new comer cast a rapid look around the room, locked the door quickly and noiselessly from within, and then went to the middle of the room.
"What do you want?" asked Count Malikowsky, still busy with his cravat.
"My name is Berger. I have already told you what I want."
"If you have any demand upon me you can speak to my valet. I do not trouble myself with such things."
"I know very well," said Berger, without changing a feature, "that Count Malikowsky likes best to have demands which are presented to him in person attended to by others, even by assassins, if needs be; but this time I trust he will make an exception."
With these words he approached the round table in the centre of the room, placed the little box on it, and took from the box the two pistols which it contained.
The count had witnessed these proceedings with an amazement which made him for a time speechless and motionless. The sight of the pistols, however, brought him to his senses again. With a rapidity which one would not have thought possible at his age he hastened to the door.
Berger stepped in his way, the pistols in his hand.
"One more effort to escape," he said, "one sound, and you die like a dog! Stand over there, on the other side of the table; so!"
"The man is mad!" murmured the count, obeying Berger's command and trembling in all his limbs.
"Maybe!" said Berger, with an uncomfortable laugh; "but if I am mad it is your fault, count. You do not know me?"
"No; indeed, I do not!"
"Maybe I have changed slightly since I last had the equivocal honor of meeting you. I will assist your memory. Do you know this?"
He opened the medallion and held it towards the count across the table. The count took his gold eye-glass and looked at the miniature. It was a well-painted portrait of a marvellously beautiful, brown-eyed girl, in the costume of the year 1820.
"Leonora!" cried the count, starting back.
"Yes; Leonora!" repeated Berger, closing the medallion again and putting it away. "And now I hope you will know who I am, and what the account is which we have to settle."
The count had turned pale even under his rouge; his false teeth rattled; he had to sit down in an arm-chair which stood near the table, as he could not stand any longer.
Berger seemed to enjoy the wretched sight.
"How the coward trembles!" he said. "How the mean heart in the hollow bosom knocks against the ribs for the sake of a useless bit of life! Miserable coward! You can seduce girls, but you cannot face a man! Here, take this pistol and end a life full of disgrace by an honorable death!"
"I cannot do it," whined the count; "have pity on me! You see, I am an old man; my hands tremble from gout; I cannot hold a pen, much less a pistol, steady!"
"Is that so?" asked Berger; "are you really nothing but a whitewashed grave? Why, then, it would be harder punishment to let you live!"
Berger bowed his head and thought a moment.
"Be it so!" he said. He put the pistols back in the box. The count breathed freely.
"I have longed for this hour these thirty years. I thought revenge would be wondrously sweet; but the cup in which it is offered to me is too disgusting. I do not want it."
Berger had said this as if speaking to himself. Now he raised his lids, fixed his piercing eyes on the count, who was still trembling in the corner of his chair, and said:
"I have done with you. I will leave you your miserable life, but under one condition: You will leave town in an hour, and never appear again in Germany. I do not want a blackguard like you to breathe German air."
"As you wish it! as you wish it!" said the count. "I shall be glad to get out of the wretched country."
Berger put the box in his pocket. Suddenly wild tumult was heard in the street. Berger was instantly at the window. Crowds of people--men, women, and children--were rushing down the broad streets. "We are betrayed! They fire at us! To arms! To arms!"
"To arms! To arms!" cried Berger, raising his arms on high in wild joyousness. "At last! at last! Thanks, Great Spirit!"
He turned away from the window, seized the count, whom curiosity had roused from his terror, by the breast, and shaking him with perfect fury, he cried:
"Do you hear, coward? to arms! A whole nation calls to arms! Women and children! Now all the old debts shall be paid that you and the like of you have contracted for the last thirty years!"
He pushed the half-dead man contemptuously from him, opened the door, and rushed out.
He ran against an officer, who was just about to enter.
It was Prince Waldenberg.
"Pardon me, father, if I cannot keep my promise to accompany you to the princess," said the prince, out of breath; "but you hear the rebellion is out again. I expect every moment to hear the drums beat."
The count was still quite beside himself from the encounter with Berger. He stared at the prince with a pale, disturbed countenance.
"What is the matter, father?" asked the prince, who now only noticed the change in his appearance.
"Go to the devil with your father, sir," cried the count, in whom the wild hatred he had cherished for so many years against his wife's son at last broke out into full fury. "I am not your father. I do not choose to be your father. If you wish to see your father go to your mother. You will find him there!"
"What do you mean, father?" said the prince, fearing the count had become insane.
"Father!" mimicked the count, scornfully. "Delightful! Charming! But I am tired of the farce. You can all go to the devil!"
He rang the bell.
"My carriage; do you hear?" he cried, as the waiter came. Then turning to the prince, "Will you go now, sir, or not?"
The prince looked at the count like a man who does not know whether he shall believe his own ears and eyes or not. Suddenly he seemed to have formed a resolution. He cast one more look at the count, who was running about like a madman, and left the room.
Mr. Schmenckel walked slowly down the Linden to William street. He had crossed his arms behind and pressed his hat low down on his brow. People made way for him, for he stared fixedly at the pavement, and continually murmured unintelligible words through his teeth. But Mr. Schmenckel was neither drunk nor mad; he was only a little excited, and repeated the lesson which Berger had taught him. It was a hard task; but Mr. Schmenckel felt that he was only doing his duty if he broke up the plot into which he had been entrapped by the cunning of Mr. Timm. How fortunate that he had revealed it all to the professor in his great anxiety! How that man talked! Why, he had frightened him out of his wits! Schmenckel had always said that the professor was a man of very special gifts. And that the Czika turned out to be a baron's daughter, that was no wonder to Director Schmenckel, of Vienna. She had such wonderful eyes, that girl, and he had always treated her well; it was not so strange, therefore, that the baron should have offered old Caspar Schmenckel a place as steward on one of his estates. No; Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, need not try to obtain money by foul means. Caspar Schmenckel could hold his head high again and----
"Why on earth, old man, are you coming only now?" said suddenly a very sharp voice near him. "You ought to have done with your visit by this time!"
It was Mr. Timm who had uttered these angry words. He had been patrolling up and down William street, in the neighborhood of the Waldenberg mansion, in order to hear the result of Oswald's interview with the Baroness Grenwitz. He thought Director Schmenckel was by this time on his way to the Dismal Hole, where they had appointed to meet in case they should miss each other in the street. Timm had had his reasons for sending Schmenckel an hour sooner than Oswald to the house. If Oswald's interview with the baroness was to be successful, the baroness must first have read a certain letter; and in order to make the letter effective, Schmenckel must first have had a conference with the princess. In Mr. Timm's exquisite plans each measure fitted into the other as in the works of a watch. Mr. Timm had, therefore, good reasons for being very indignant at Mr. Schmenckel's dereliction.
"It is enough to drive one mad," he continued, in his irritation. "I cannot leave you alone for a moment but you commit a stupid blunder."
"Oh! not so rude, my friend!" replied Mr. Schmenckel, feeling in his virtuous purposes quite able to cope with the serpent-wisdom of his accomplice, "or I'll become personal too!"
Mr. Timm saw that he had gone too far.
"Well, well!" he said, gently; "between friends no offence ought to be taken. Only make haste now to go in. All may come out right yet. You have seen the count this morning?"
"No!" growled Mr. Schmenckel.
"But why on earth haven't you seen him?" exclaimed Timm, whose indignation was roused once more.
"Because I did not choose!" said Schmenckel, defiantly. "Because I do not want to have anything more to do with you anyway!"
"Ah!" said Timm; "you would like to raise the treasure by yourself? I have burnt my fingers to draw the chestnuts out of the fire for you, eh? No, my dear sir, we are not quite such fools. He who wants to be paid must work."
"I do not want a farthing of that wretched money!" cried Schmenckel. "I am going to tell the princess that I am an honest fellow, and that she need not trouble herself any further."
"Are you piping in that way?" asked Timm. "You mean to betray me a little, do you? Have a care, man; you might have to pay dear for the fun!"
"I shall do what I like," said Schmenckel, assuming a very determined air, and walking off with long strides.
"You shall not enter that house!" cried Timm, and seized Schmenckel by the arm.
Schmenckel's reply to this challenge was a blow, which hurled Mr. Timm very unpleasantly across the sidewalk against the wall. The next moment the great portal had closed behind Mr. Schmenckel.
The little altercation with Mr. Timm had put him in a kind of heroic ecstasy well suited for the interview he was about to have. Thus it happened that he was not abashed by the gorgeous livery of the servants, nor by the splendor of the rooms through which he was led. But his courage failed him and his heart sank when the servant stopped at a door and whispered: "Her grace is in there; go in without knocking; she expects you." Mr. Schmenckel passed his hand through his thick hair, cleared his voice, held his hat firmly under his left arm, and entered cautiously.
A rosy twilight received him, and in the rosy twilight he noticed two women, one of whom was seated in an arm-chair near the bright fire that was burning there in spite of the warm weather, while the other stood a little sideways behind the chair. Both of them examined him as he approached with eager curiosity. His reception caused him to shorten his steps more and more till he suddenly came to a stop half way between the door and the fire-place.
"Come nearer, my friend," said the lady who was standing behind the chair.
Mr. Schmenckel advanced a few inches and came again to a stop, quite determined this time not to approach nearer to those formidable eyes.
"You are the man who wrote to Count Malikowsky day before yesterday?" asked the lady behind the chair.
"Yes, your grace." Mr. Schmenckel felt as if these words, which he no doubt had uttered himself, had been spoken by some one else at the other end of the large apartment. This was by no means calculated to bring back the heroic frame of mind which the rosy twilight and the bright eyes had so seriously damaged. He blushed all over, and cleared his voice in order to convince himself that it was really he himself who was speaking to the ladies.
"Your name is Schmenckel?" asked the lady behind the chair.
"Yes, your grace."
"And you were in St. Petersburg twenty-four years ago?"
"Yes, your grace."
"And you visited at Letbus House?"
"Yes, your grace."
"Do you recognize me?"
Mr. Schmenckel fixed his eyes, which had been resting upon everything in the room except the two ladies on the speaker, and said, after a short reflection,
"I should think so; although I should not like to swear to it. If it was not such a very long time since, I should say you were the Nadeska, the chambermaid of the princess, who was all the time bringing me notes and rose bouquets into the Black Bear."
Nadeska bent over her mistress and whispered a few words into her ear, to which the latter replied in the same tone. Then Nadeska left the room.
"Wont you sit down, Mr. Schmenckel?" said the princess, as soon as they were alone.
Mr. Schmenckel seated himself on the outer edge of an arm-chair.
"Do you recognize me also?" asked the lady.
Mr. Schmenckel bowed, placing his hand on his heart.
"Why did you not come to me directly?" the princess continued in a tone of gentle reproach. "Why did you take the count into your confidence? Have I ever been ungenerous towards you. Was it my fault if our last meeting ended as it did?"
Mr. Schmenckel was about to reply, but the princess continued.
"If I had known that you were still living, and where you were living, I would have provided for you liberally; and I am still willing to do so. But one condition I must make: you must have nothing to do with the count; and, above all things, you must never dare come near the prince. If you will comply with these conditions you may ask what you choose, and if Alexandrina Letbus is able to do it it shall be done!"
The princess extended imploringly her thin, transparent hand; her black eyes filled with tears; the rosy twilight gave a spiritual beauty to her pale but still beautiful features. Mr. Schmenckel had a susceptible heart in his bosom, and the humility of the great lady moved him deeply.
"Let me say a word now, too, your grace," he said "I am not the scoundrel you make me out. I should never have dreamt, your grace, of writing a letter to the count, if I had not been persuaded to do so by an awfully bad man. Timm is his name. I never knew at all that Caspar Schmenckel, of Vienna, had such a great lord for his son. But that man Timm said to me: No harm in beating about the bush; no harm in that! Then he wrote the letter, and carried it himself to the count. The count came the same evening to the Dismal Hole to see me, and told me he was very glad if I could make life a little hard to you, Mrs. Princess. But he said I must not say a word to the prince, or there would be an end to the fun. And then, says he, you ask too much; a fourth of it is enough. And he told me to talk it over with your grace and then he would pay me the money this forenoon at his hotel. Now, your grace, you may believe it or not, as you choose, but Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, is an honest fellow, and don't like to do any harm to anybody, least of all to a beautiful lady who was once upon a time very kind to poor Caspar. And when your grace sent for me, and let me know that you wanted to see me yourself, I said: Caspar, says I, go to the princess and tell her so and so, and she must not trouble herself about it any more; Caspar Schmenckel will never come near her in all his life. And as for the money, I tell your grace, not a penny do I want to touch of it, not if it were to turn into pure gold on the spot. And so, your grace--princess, good-by to you! And if we don't see each other again you must remain well, and don't you trouble yourself any more about Caspar Schmenckel; he'll never do you any harm. I kiss your hand, your grace!"
With these words he rose and made his best bow.
The princess was very much touched.
"Good fellow," she said, with trembling voice.
Her eyes dwelt with pleasure upon the herculean proportions of the man who was the father of her son. The extraordinary resemblance between them, in figure as well as in face, filled her with mournful satisfaction. She thought of the days when this man, a lion in strength and agility, had conquered not her heart but her imagination. But at the same moment a sudden fear overcame her lest her son should find his father here--lest her son with his pride and his passionate temper should ever discover that this juggler, this rope-dancer, was the father of Prince Waldenberg.
"You must go!" she said, hurriedly. "Here,"--she took a superb ring from her finger, in which the diamonds shone in all the colors of the rainbow as they caught the light of the fire--"here; no words, take it! I wore it long, long ago, even when Nadeska first brought you to me; take it as a keepsake from Alexandrina Letbus! But now go, go!"
She touched the silver bell. Nadeska entered.
"Show him out! Mind that no one sees you!"
Nadeska took Mr. Schmenckel, who would have liked to say something, but was too confused and embarrassed to find words, and led him through a secret door which led near the fire-place into a narrow passage, and then through a private staircase into the courtyard.
The princess sank exhausted back into the cushions of her easy-chair, and hid her eyes behind her hand. She did not notice that a heavy curtain on the right hand from the fire-place, which had been moving several times during her conversation with Mr. Schmenckel, now opened and admitted the prince. She only heard him when he was close by her. She opened her eyes, and at the same moment she uttered a piercing shriek--his unexpected appearance and a single glance at his pale, disturbed face told her that he had heard all.
"Mercy, Raimund! Mercy!" she cried, raising her folded hands in agony towards him.
Raimund's broad chest was heaving as if it were struggling with an overwhelming burden, and his voice sounded like a hoarse death-rattle, as he now said, pointing with the finger at the door through which Schmenckel had left,
"Was that man who has just left you my father?"
"Mercy, Raimund! Mercy! Are you going to kill your mother?"
"Better you had never borne me than this!"
The powerful man trembled as if violent fever were shaking him; a groan broke from his breast which resounded fearfully through the gorgeous apartment.
"By all the saints, Raimund, hear me, I beseech you! I will tell you all!"
"I need not hear any more. I know too much already. The count called me a bastard! I thought he was mad! He called me by my right name."
He put his hand to his side--he had laid aside his sword in the ante-room. His eyes looked searchingly around as if looking for a weapon. His mother understood him.
"Raimund, Raimund, what are you going to do?"
"Make an end of it as soon as possible!"
"No man will ever know----"
"Willknow? Who does not know it? Nadeska! the count! this man! Are my rank, my honor, my fortune to depend on the whim of a chambermaid, the discretion of a heartless roué, and the silence of a rope-dancer?
"Am I to wait till the people in the street----"
"I will kill every man who knows it! They shall die--they shall all die, if you but remain my own."
"And if they were to die, and if no one knew but you and I--yes, mother, if you were dead and the secret were buried in my bosom, I should not think it safe even there; I should hide myself and my disgrace in the lowest depths of the earth."
The princess covered her pale face with her thin hands. But this was not the moment to abandon herself to idle grief. She knew her son's character too well not to be aware that it was a question of life and death.
"Raimund," she said, starting up again, "you do not kill yourself only; you kill me too! You are my all, my sun, and my light! I never had another child but you. You do not know what it is to have a child and to love it, especially when one is as unhappy as I have been! I never loved the count. I could not have loved a roué who has wasted his fortune and his health in abominable profligacy. I became his wife because--because the czar would have it so. And I was so young at that time, and so frivolous and thoughtless, grown up in all the splendor and luxury of the most splendid and most luxurious court on earth! I was not a faithful wife--nor was the count a faithful husband. It mattered little to him; but he wished to get a hold on me in order to force me to provide for his mad expenditures. He had long watched me--till at last, I do not know yet by what unlucky accident or by whose treachery, he discovered my secret. From that moment my life has been a perpetual torture; I have grown old before my time. I never had anything but you and your love to warm my heart in this icy-cold world. If you rob me of that also, I must succumb. Raimund, is this your gratitude for all my love?"
The son had listened to his mother's cunning words, which interwove truth and fiction so skilfully, with an air as black as a wall of thunder-laden clouds.
"Show me the possibility of living," he replied, "and I will live. As it is, I cannot live. I cannot endure the consciousness that my blood is no better than that which flows in the veins of my groom."
"Am I not your mother?"
"Is that low person not my father?"
"Yes, Raimund, he is, and to him you owe your proud strength; to him you owe it, that all men appear weaklings by your side. Would you rather be the count's son and inherit his wretched feebleness, his poisoned blood? And do you fancy that in our veins no other blood flows but noble blood?--that your case is the only one in which a degenerate race has been renewed by an admixture of sound but humble blood? Shall I tell you a few anecdotes of our own circles? And do you think it is different in higher and the very highest families?"
The princess rose lightly from her chair and whispered something in her son's ear. But he grimly shook his head.
"Is it thus with us?" he said. "Then we had better break our swords to pieces, and drag our coats-of-arms through the mire. I have kept my honor unsullied; I have no sin on my conscience, but I must atone for the sins of others, before the tide rises higher and higher, and I get deeper and deeper into the mire. Do you know that the man with whom I had a personal encounter Under the Lindens a few days ago was this very man!" The prince pointed at the door through which Mr. Schmenckel had made his way out. "Do you know that I escaped but by a hair's breadth staining my sword with the blood of him who is my father? No! no! The measure is full to overflowing!"
"And Helen?" The prince shuddered.
The princess saw how deep that arrow had entered. A gleam of hope appeared to her; she thought she might after all be victorious in this conflict.
"Are you going to destroy your greatest happiness? will you make this angel also wretched? will you humiliate yourself before her, the proud beauty? Impossible! You cannot mean it. You are bound to life with chains of steel and with chains of roses. You can break the former, you dare not break these."
"It is in vain," said the prince; "all your words cannot remove this terrible burden!" He placed his hand on his breast. "Henceforth Farewell!"
He turned to go.
"Raimund!" screamed the princess, rising suddenly from her chair and clinging to her son, "what do you mean to do?"
"Nothing mean, be sure," he said, trying to disengage himself gently from her arms. "Farewell!"
"Go then, barbarian, and murder--" She could not finish; the terrible excitement of these last two scenes was too much for her suffering nerves; she sank fainting upon her chair.
At that moment Nadeska came back. A glance at the scene in the room told her what had happened.
"You will kill the poor lady," she said, hastening to assist her fainting mistress. "And why all this? It will never be known."
The prince laughed. It was a fearful laugh.
"Do you think so, Nadeska?" he said. "But suppose you talked in your dreams? Or have you sold your dreams also to the princess?"
He beat his forehead with his closed fist and rushed out.
As the prince hurried through the ante-room, like Orestes driven by the furies, he met the Baroness Grenwitz, who came to take leave of the princess. He thought he would sink into the ground for shame, as she looked fixedly into his eyes. She said something to him, but he did not hear what it was. His ears were ringing with strange sounds. He uttered an inarticulate sound, which was to represent an apology. Then he rushed out.
The baroness followed him with a sombre, suspicious look.
Anna Maria had not had a happy moment since she had entered the house. The reception last night had touched her to the quick. The constrained manner of the prince, the unprofitable efforts of the princess to give to the interview a more cordial tone, the thinly-veiled irony of the count, who ridiculed every affectionate word--all this had filled her with sad apprehensions for Helen's future. She had passed the night without sleep, thinking over the riddle, and again and again she had come to the conclusion that the princess must have been faithless to her husband at some time in her life, and that the count thus had an iron hold on her. Perhaps the striking want of resemblance between father and son might have contributed to such a conclusion. Thus she had risen late in very bad humor, and with a violent nervous headache, and was rather pleased to learn that Miss Helen had driven out to visit her friend, Sophie. Helen had scarcely left the house when two letters were brought in, one from Grunwald, the other from the city itself. She opened the one from Grunwald first. The news of Malte's illness filled her with consternation. She had always trembled for his life, from childhood up; were her fears to be realized now? And if Malte should die--oh that God in His great mercy would prevent that!--the whole entailed estate went, now that Felix also was no more, to a Captain Grenwitz, the son of her former husband's first cousin, a beggar, whom she had never liked, and who had always looked like a hungry pike eagerly snapping at the estate. He was henceforth to be master at Grenwitz? Why, after all, she would have preferred to find out that Oswald Stein was really Harald's legitimate son.
Mechanically she opened the second letter. It was from Albert Timm and ran thus:
"Madame:--After our last interview you will not be surprised if I now use the weaponsagainstyou, which I until then had been usingforyou. Mr. Stein has been fully informed. Before the year is out--you may rely on it--he is master of Stantow and Baerwalde, and you will, besides, have to pay the back interest for twenty-four years. This is simple ruin for you. I might rub my hands with delight at your discomfiture; but Albert Timm is a good-natured fellow and offers you a piece of good advice in return for your ingratitude. Make your peace with Mr. Stein before it is too late! Better a small sacrifice than an entire loss. I send your adversary to you; receive him kindly, and if you are wise give him the hand of your daughter, who loves him madly. The princely match is anyhow at an end, considering that the prince is not the son of a count, but of a rope-dancer, and the matter is in such a position that the whole world will soon enjoy the grand scandal. But I must resist your desire to hear the full explanation of this interesting affair, which you might disregard as you disregarded certain other explanations of mine. Perhaps you may change your mind after the interview with Mr. Stein, and become convinced of the sincere friendship with which I have the honor, etc., etc."
At any other time the baroness would have looked upon this letter merely as a renewed effort on the part of Mr. Timm to regain his lost position; but this morning her mind was so disturbed that the letter and everything else appeared to her in quite a new light. Was not, after all, everything and anything possible in this false world? It was evident that this Mr. Timm knew more than most people, and at all events the persistence with which he adhered to his statements was very remarkable. Even Felix in his last letter had admitted the fact!
The usual energy of the baroness gradually gave way under the heavy pressure. And now Helen, whom she had sent for, was not coming back; and in an hour the train would start by which alone she could reach Grunwald next day! Her trunks were not packed, the question whether Helen should accompany her or stay had not been decided, and she had yet to take leave of the princess and the prince. But that, at all events, could be done in Helen's absence! Necessity released her from the rules of etiquette; and, besides, the princess herself had asked her the night before to come unannounced to her rooms.
Thus Anna Maria left her rooms and went hastily down the long passages and through the ante-rooms which led to the apartments of the princess, when suddenly the prince rushed out, evidently in a high state of excitement, and passed her without saying a word.
"That is strange!" said the baroness. The door opened again suddenly, and Nadeska rushed out with terror in her face.
"Where is the princess?" asked the baroness.
"In there. She is unwell. No one is coming to answer the bell. I am going to look for the servants."
"Do so!" said the baroness. "I will stay in the meantime with the princess."
Nadeska did not look as if she liked the arrangement, but she dared not prevent the baroness from entering. She hurried away, while Anna Maria stepped into the rosy twilight of the apartments of the princess.
She was still lying in the arm-chair near the fire. Her half-closed eyes and the convulsive movements of her hands showed that she had not quite recovered yet from a fit of fainting.
"Give me back my son, Nadeska!" she murmured. "He must not wrestle with that Hercules; the father is stronger than the son. You see! you see! how he takes him around the waist and lifts him up. He will throw him down, here at my feet. There, there----"
The unfortunate woman broke out in hysterics, mixed with a horrible laugh. Between times she raved:
"Don't let the count know! The count will tell the baroness! The baroness will tell her beautiful daughter, and then she wont take the rope-dancer's son! There he comes, his head cut open, and----"
A fearful cry broke from the bosom of the sufferer. She started up, and stared with haggard looks at the baroness. Immediately she sank back once more, fainting anew. Nadeska came in with a couple of Russian maids. She seemed to be anxious to get the baroness out of the way.
"The princess has these attacks quite often," she said, in her smooth, humble manner, while the servants took up the fainting lady and carried her into her bed-room. "She must be left alone in such cases; the presence of strangers makes it only worse."
"I am not going to disturb her, my dear," said the baroness, coldly; "especially as I have to leave in an hour. I shall write a few lines to her grace."
"What does that mean?" said Nadeska. "Does she also know more than she ought to know?"
The baroness returned to her rooms in a state of indescribable excitement. What was that she had seen and heard? The wild expression in the prince's face, the confused speeches of the princess, the suspicious' manner of the waiting woman, who evidently knew all about the family drama--what was she to think of it? What ought she to do? It was perhaps the first time in her life that the clever, sensible woman was utterly at a loss. But was not the ground giving way under her feet? Was the indestructible pillar of her success not snapping suddenly like a bruised reed? The prince a rope-dancer's son! A family secret anxiously guarded for twenty-odd years, suddenly proclaimed in the streets and on the house-tops! Her son, the legitimate heir to the immense estate, sick unto death! An unknown scion of a former owner, rising unexpectedly from obscurity, a lost will in his right hand, which made him owner of a fortune that the baroness had all her life regarded as her own! And what would Helen say? How her pride would suffer when she learnt that the diamonds of the princely crown were nothing but vile glass, unfit for the lowest of the low!
A carriage came dashing into the court-yard. It was Helen. The heart of the baroness beat as if the decisive moment was only now approaching. A few anxious moments and the beautiful daughter came, pale and distressed, into the room, and threw herself into her mother's arms with a passionate vehemence which contrasted most strangely with her usual reserve and coldness.
"God be thanked you are back!" said Anna Maria. "I must go; I wanted to ask you if you will go with me!"
"Can you ask me?" cried Helen. "I should stay here, and without you?"
"Then you do not feel happy here, Helen?"
"No, no! I do not love the prince! I have never loved him!" And Helen hid her face on her mother's bosom.
The baroness was much surprised. Helen's words, and even more the tone in which she said them, and her whole strange, passionate manner, suddenly gave her an utterly new insight into her daughter's character. She had a dim perception that large portions of her inner life had so far been utterly unknown to her, and that all her cleverness, of which she was so proud, had not enabled her to see clearly in her own daughter's heart.
"Why did you give your promise then?" she asked.
"I cannot tell. I was--I did not know what I was doing. But now I do know it. I cannot marry the prince; he must give me back my word. If you insist upon the marriage I shall die!"
"And if I do not insist?"
It was now Helen's turn to be surprised. She looked at the baroness with wondering eyes.
"As I say, my dear child, I have made certain discoveries this morning which have startled me, to say the least, very much, and which have brought me the conviction that we have proceeded in this whole matter with a want of caution which might possibly have been quite disastrous to us all."
"I do not understand you, mamma!" said Helen.
"Well, it is hard to understand," said Anna Maria, plaintively. "I hardly know where my head is. I am perfectly miserable!"
And the baroness threw herself into a chair as if she were broken-hearted, and commenced weeping bitterly.
Helen had never seen her mother weep. The unusual sight touched her deeply. She knelt down by her, and tried to console her with kind, soothing words. But it was all in vain.
"It is not that alone, though that is bad enough," sobbed Anna Maria; "but we also are threatened with a similar exposure," and under the pressure of a moment, yielding to the natural impulse of all helpless sufferers to cling to others at any hazard, she told Helen in a few words all about Oswald's claims on her fortune, and that if these claims should be legally established she and her daughter alike would be beggars.
Helen had listened to her in breathless excitement. Her color came and went continually, her eyes were fixed on her mother, her hand held her mother's hands with a firm grasp.
"Beggars! you say? Better so and a clear conscience than in abundance and fainting with anxiety! Come, mamma, I am not afraid of poverty! You have often told me how poor you were before you were married to papa. Why should I be better off? I do not see that being rich has made you happy, or papa; he told me so in his last hour. I have seen it with my own eyes how much happier people are who have nothing but their affection, who rely on nothing but their own strength. I have strength; I can and will work for you, if it must be so. But now let us go away from here. You are sick and weary; your hand is icy cold, and your forehead is burning; stay, do not get up. I will pack your things; you need not trouble yourself; I shall be down in five minutes."
"No," said the baroness, "let me do that. Mary can help me. You can do something else for me. We cannot well leave without writing a few words of farewell to the princess, as she is too unwell to see us, and we are in such a hurry. Sit down and write a few lines, kindly and politely, but neither more nor less than what is indispensable."
"I will do so," said Helen, sitting down at her escritoire, while her mother went into the adjoining room.
Helen had just taken up her pen when she heard a noise behind her which made her look up. In the middle of the room stood Oswald, deadly pale, his large eyes, brilliant with fever, fixed upon her. Helen was so terrified that she could not speak nor move. She thought for a moment it was an apparition.
Oswald seemed to guess so.
"It is really I!" he said. "Pardon me for my abrupt appearance. I asked for the baroness; they showed me in here."
"I will call my mother," said Helen, rising.
"I pray, stay," said Oswald; "I pray you! I have only two words to say. I would rather say them to you than to the baroness."
There was something so solemn in Oswald's manner and tone of voice that Helen had not the heart to refuse his request.
"Will you sit down?" she said, sinking herself into a chair and pointing at another chair near her.
Oswald sat down.
"I do not know, Miss Helen, if your mother has spoken to you of certain intrigues by which she has been troubled of late, and which originate mainly with a certain Mr. Timm?"
"I have just this morning heard of it for the first time."
"That was my own fate. And this is what brings me here. I cannot bear the thought; I believe I could not die quietly if I thought that you believed me capable of employing such vile means against you. Will you please tell the baroness so?"
"I will."
"And tell her also, I pray, and believe yourself, how bitterly I regret that you have been troubled with such a matter."
"It was nothing but an invention of Mr. Timm!"
"No, Miss Helen!" said Oswald, with a sorrowful smile. "I presume it is more than that. I am only too much afraid it is the real truth, and that is the second reason why you see me here."
"You surely do not imagine we would refuse to acknowledge legitimate claims against us?"
"That case will never arise. I have no desire to make such claims. I should never have done so, under any circumstances; and least of all now."
He cast a look around him. The splendor of the apartment reminded him forcibly in whose house he was.
"Least of all now!" he repeated. "Here are the papers which prove this most unfortunate of all stories. I desire the baroness to take them and to keep them, so as to be secure at all times against that man's machinations."
He placed the documents and papers which Timm had brought him a few hours before upon Helen's escritoire, and bowed to take leave.
"One moment, sir!" said Helen, rising likewise. "Do you imagine my mother will accept such a gift? Who has given you the right to think so little of us?"
"I think, Miss Helen, your pride misleads you in this instance. There is evidently no one whom this whole matter concerns except myself, and I desire to be relieved of an unpleasant suspicion. It was hardly necessary to remind me that a few hundred thousand dollars, more or less, mattered little to the mother of the owner of Grenwitz, and to the betrothed of Prince Waldenberg."
"Circumstances ought not to affect our duties," replied the young girl, rising to her full height and curving her lips contemptuously; "and you need not believe that I am so indifferent to your claims because, I am proud of our wealth and our rank. We are at this very moment on the point of leaving for Grenwitz, where my brother is lying dangerously ill; and there, on my escritoire, lies the beginning of a letter in which the princess will be told that I shall never be her son's wife."
Helen's dark eyes were shining brightly; the hot blood gave greater depth to the red on her cheeks. Oswald had never seen her so beautiful, so marvellously beautiful. And this at the moment when he had already in his heart bid farewell to life, which had no longer any charms for him. Just now this glorious beauty, this highest beau-ideal of his wildest dreams, must present herself to him, not at an inapproachable distance, but within reach attainable to his bold desires--to his firm will, perhaps! Why did she tell him that she would never marry the prince? And why did she tell it in such a defiant tone, if she did not mean to humble him--the weak, hesitating, fickle man--by the strength of her will, by the promptness with which she abandoned all this splendor, merely in order to remain true to herself?
These thoughts passed swiftly through Oswald's mind, which worked all the faster as he had been so long sleepless and feverish. He knew that she would never have told him all this if she had not loved him at some time or other; if she did not perhaps still love him; and yet he knew with absolute certainty that they were separated from each other irretrievably by all that had happened. There was therefore no bitterness, but deep sadness in his voice, as he fixed his eyes immoveably upon the heavenly beauty before him and said, slowly:
"Let us not sadden one another still more by violent, bitter words! Who knows whether we shall ever speak to each other again? I feel like a dying man, and what I am going to say I do not say for myself, but from an earnest desire to state the truth. Helen, I have loved you from the hour when I saw you first in the park at Grenwitz! I have never forgotten that moment. I know that you also would have loved me if I had but been true to myself; you might have become my own. But when I forsook myself you also forsook me, and now there is an abyss between us over which there is no bridge. And what seemed to be about to bring us together--the discovery of this morning--only parts us forever. I feel it clearly. You will never be disposed to accept a gift, as you call it; and I would rather burn my right hand than stretch it out after the inheritance of a man who made my mother the most wretched of women. There is no peace possible between us, even if everything else were as it ought to be. And now, Helen, before we part--probably forever--one more request; give me your hand across that gulf which parts us, as a token that I am forgiven!"
Helen laid her hand in Oswald's.
Thus they stood and looked deep into each other's eyes; and as they so looked they saw all the golden summer mornings in the past at Grenwitz under the whispering trees, and all the purple-glowing evenings in the green beech woods near the sea-shore--and then they saw nothing more, for a close veil of tears hid the enchanting images.
"Farewell, Helen!"
"Farewell, Oswald!"
"Forever!"
"Forever!"
Oswald did not take the beloved one in his arms; a feeling of holy reverence kept him back. He felt that the time for repentance which was granted to him was too short, and swearing new vows which he felt no strength to keep was not making amends for so many broken ones.
He let the hand go which he had held in his own, and--the next moment Helen was alone.
She was still standing so, her eyes fixed on the door through which Oswald had disappeared, when the baroness came back to the room.
"It is high time, Helen," she said; "the carriage is waiting. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"What papers are those on the escritoire?"
"Did he not take them again?"
"Who?"
"Oswald."
"Has he been here? What did he want?"
"He came to say good-by. Take those papers, mother. He brought them to you."
"Helen, you look pale; and you have been crying! What does that mean? Do you love that man? Must I lose my last child then?"
"Be calm, mamma. I shall not leave you in our misfortune. There is the letter to the princess. One moment, mother."
She sat down and wrote in great haste a few lines.
"Well, that is done! I am free once more! Come, mamma; I will show you that I have still strength and courage enough for life. Come!"
And she drew the baroness, who willingly yielded herself up to her daughter's superior energy, with her out of the room.
A minute later the two ladies had left Waldenberg House, and half an hour afterwards the train carried them away from the city.