"No!"
"Have you confessed your love to her?"
"No!"
"How do you know, then, that she loves you too?"
"I don't know that."
The gradually decreasing certainty of these negations was so comical that Sophie could hardly keep from laughing.
"But, Bemperly," she cried, "how will you find that out?"
"I will ask her!" replied Bemperlein, resolutely.
"Very well! And if she says No?"
"She cannot say so; she will not say so;" cried Bemperlein, pale with emotion. "I have never thought of it, but that would be terrible. I--I thought it would be so beautiful if she should become my wife and I could work for her, and I could love her and she should love me back again! For I must love somebody with my whole heart, and I must feel that somebody loves me with her whole heart, or I should be the most wretched man in the world. Oh, Miss Sophie! surely, surely. Marguerite will not say No!"
His voice trembled and his eyes filled with tears. The kind-hearted girl was hardly less deeply moved. The passionate feeling of Bemperlein had touched a sympathetic chord in her heart. She felt suddenly under an obligation to protect the youthful love of her thirty-year-old pupil with all her power.
"What do you say, Bemperly?" she said, very decidedly. "We can soon find out. Bring Marguerite here!"
Bemperlein breathed freely again.
"May I, really?"
"Of course. I cannot very well call on her, because that would attract attention; but she can come here without its being noticed. Just tell her I should like to make her acquaintance. If she loves you, she will come soon enough; and if we once have her here, the rest will follow of course. Yes, yes," continued the young lady, clapping her hands with delight, "that is the way! that is the way! And when we are good friends, then we have another plan--oh, Bemperly, another plan--if you knew what--but no, no!--you must not know yet--nor must Franz know.
Hush, there he is. Not a word, Bemperly, of _our_ secret!"
CHAPTER IV.
Felix had changed sadly in these days, and it looked almost as if his last appearance as a star in Grenwitz, which had been such a lamentable failure, should also be his last performance in the salons where he had so often shone brilliantly. The wound which he had received in his duel with Oswald, though in itself not dangerous, had thoroughly undermined his whole system, already weakened by a wild, profligate life, just as a house in which the timber is affected with dry rot will be in danger of tumbling down at any time, if but one of the joists be removed. The ball had not injured any of the vital parts, and he had had the best of medical advice, and yet the wound would not heal. And when it began at last to look a little better, very grave symptoms of pulmonary disease in an advanced stage had suddenly shown themselves. The physicians who were called in shook their heads, spoke of the necessity of a change of air, and a longer residence in a southern climate.
But Felix refused to see what was very clear to all others. Those little scars?--why, I have been spotted very differently before. That little fever?--ridiculous; I have felt worse many a morning after a wild night. My lungs?--nonsense! What does that old wig, Balthasar, know of my lungs? I don't believe in wise wigs. Felix Grenwitz wont die so easily!
Perhaps it was a desire to confirm himself in this conviction which made the _bon vivant attempt_ to succeed in the part of a lover as soon as he was allowed to leave his room again after several weeks'
confinement with a diet of medicine and mucilage. He had looked upon neat, pretty, blue-eyed Madeline, as soon as he had seen her, as a rose-bud which it might be worth his while to gather, and he would have made some efforts in that direction long since if Albert had not, for very good reasons, dissuaded him earnestly. Besides, he had then not given up the hope of winning the fair Helen, and his eyes had been captivated for a time by her exceedingly pretty maid, Louisa. Now, when those hopes were gone, he found in the monotony of his convalescence the necessary leisure and ample opportunity to turn his attention towards little Marguerite. Felix Grenwitz knew only two classes of women: pretty women and ugly women; any other division, virtuous women and others, he did not admit. He did not believe in female virtue; he had never met with it; at most, caprice, coquettish cunning, and the art to enhance the value of the merchandise so as to induce the buyer to pay the highest price. Hence Felix Grenwitz did not believe that Marguerite was virtuous, and this all the less as this experienced man soon discovered that "Mamselle" had carried on a love affair with Mr.
Surveyor Timm while the masters were at the watering place. Timm thought about women just as he did himself, as Felix knew perfectly well; he had therefore won the game even before beginning it. Could Felix Grenwitz fail where Albert Timm had succeeded? Nevertheless, there was another item in the bill which he had overlooked, and the Don Giovanni was not a little surprised, therefore, when he failed after all. Little Marguerite had a soft heart, thirsting after love, and she had so small a share of love alloted her in life! Hence Albert Timm had been able to overcome the heart of the girl, but not her virtue. For little Marguerite was proud--proud as poor beings are who have been enslaved and ill-treated from childhood up without losing their native nobility, and whose only defence against the contempt of the world lies in their self-respect. She would have sacrificed for her lover the whole of her hard-earned little fortune, but nothing else. If Albert could not succeed who really loved her, Felix must of course fail, for she detested him. And yet he was not fastidious in the means he employed. He presented Albert to her in the darkest colors; he laughed at the poor girl for having allowed herself to be cheated by a man who wanted nothing but her few hundred dollars; a man who would do anything for money, and who would yet gamble away in a single night all the money he might have secured by fair means or foul. He effected by this description, which was unfortunately not untrue in its main features, nothing but that the little one said with flaming eyes and deep-red cheeks in her broken German: "And if _Monsieur Albert_ is really a bad man, you are not any better by a hair, _Monsieur le Baron_!" Poor child! she was soon to become fully aware that _Monsieur Albert_ and _Monsieur le Baron_ were really of precisely the same value! She had been in the adjoining room when Felix and Albert Timm had been holding their conversation, and she had felt as if she ought to sink into the ground for shame and indignation when she heard how the two gentlemen bargained so unceremoniously for her virtue, as if they had bargained for a horse. To dispel every doubt as to what she had only half understood, she had managed to meet Mr. Timm when he left the baron in the ante-room. Here she had asked him, hot-blooded as she was, about the matter, and received an answer which caused her to be bathed in tears, when Mr. Bemperlein came in a few minutes later.
Felix, however, was content to have driven off his most dangerous rival, and did not pursue his advantage for the present. The whole affair had become too serious for his taste for one thing, and then another business was just now claiming his whole attention. His health had become so much worse during the last days that even his frivolity could no longer make him blind to the imminence of actual danger. The wounds, but half healed, opened once more; a slow fever undermined his nervous system by day and by night, and he had hardly fallen asleep when a hacking cough waked him from dreams so fearful that even sleeplessness seemed a benefit in comparison. The anxiety about his health was increased by other cares which he had formerly treated very lightly, but which now had a sad effect upon his hypochondriac temper, and confused and troubled him sorely. People would crowd into his bed-chamber who would not be refused admittance by his servants--people with odd faces and remarkably soiled linen, who had no sooner succeeded in making their way to his bed-side than they opened large pocketbooks and presented the baron with a little bit of a note "for two hundred or three hundred dollars--a mere trifle for the baron."
Perhaps the baron would have been able to redeem these ominous papers if he had been what he had hoped to be when he adorned them with his signature: the acknowledged affianced of Helen, and the son-in-law of the richest landowner of the province. But unfortunately he was neither the one nor the other, had no prospect of becoming such, and could therefore not be very much astonished if the baroness was less gracious every time she met one of these suspicious personages. It had been different a few weeks ago, when the sun of his invincible power of charming was still in the zenith. Felix knew perfectly well that his aunt was so liberal only, in spite of her natural disposition, because she knew him to be in possession of a grave family secret. But even this last tie, which could be replaced by no other, was hanging on a single thread.
For he could not doubt that it was only the fear of "the stupid honesty of the baron"--the identical words of his amiable wife--which kept her from bringing matters to a crisis in her conflict with Albert Timm, and Felix was by no means quite sure whether even this fear was likely to induce her to assent to the bargain which he had made with Albert in her name. He had, therefore, not dared yet to tell her the full amount for which he had purchased Albert's silence.
His timidity in the whole business had a very good motive in his critical situation. He had to keep his aunt in the best possible humor in order to obtain from her the sums he required for his personal wants. It would be time enough hereafter to enlighten her on the subject of Timm's demand. Felix hated Oswald intensely, and it would have been intolerable to him to see the hated man obtain possession of the large fortune with Albert's aid, and perhaps after awhile also of Helen's hand; but all that had to give way for the present to the imperative necessities of his position.
This was the condition of things when the baroness came on the morning after the party, where Felix of course had not been able to be present, to pay the patient a visit, after having been ceremoniously announced.
Felix was wrapped up in a large dressing gown, and sat shivering close to the stove. His big eyes, once so supercilious, and now glassy and staring, and the sickly, well-defined red spot on his lean cheeks, bore witness to the rapid progress which the disease had made during the last days. Somewhat astonished at such a visit at so unusual an hour, he half rose from his chair, and offered his aunt his thin feverish hand.
"_Bon jour, ma tante!_ must I say, so early or so late? for you have been dancing till very recently. I heard the bass viol all the way down to my room here: brm! brm! brm! until it nearly made me crazy; and if you had not cured me of cursing, my dear aunt, I could have wished the accursed creature who made all the tantrum down to the deepest place in----"
"I hope your health is not worse to-day than your cursing," said Anna Maria, smiling. She settled down in an arm-chair before the patient, and took out some work as an evidence that she intended to pay a long visit. "But seriously speaking, dear Felix, I have been sorry for you, and I have come to ask your pardon for the interruption."
"Why, you are prodigiously gracious to-day, _ma tante_?"
"I thought I always was so," replied Anna Maria; "only there are people who will never be persuaded of it."
"I am not one of them, dear aunt."
"I know it, Felix; and I trust you will acknowledge that I have always done for you whatever was in my power."
"Yes indeed; yes indeed!" murmured Felix, reflecting whether this was a favorable moment to mention to his aunt a little affair in which he was involved--now nearly three months--with a certain Mr. Wolfson, of the firm of Wolfson, Reinike & Co., and which had to be settled in a few days.
"The company--who, however, broke up punctually at a quarter past two, dear Felix--seemed to enjoy themselves very much," continued the baroness, "and I was heartily sorry that you could not be there. It is really high time you should report yourself well again."
"God knows!" sighed the patient, impatiently tossing about in his arm-chair, "I am turning a perfect hypochondriac in this hole. But tell me something about yesterday. Who was there?"
"Oh, not a great many; you know I do not like very large parties: Grieben, Nadlitz, Bamewitz, Cloten----"
"That is not a bad arrangement of names," said Felix. "Did not Hortense and Clotilde scratch each other's eyes out?"
"Oh, no! they are the best friends in the world; and besides, yesterday they had no reason to dispute each other the palm, as that had been decided before by the unanimous judgment of the whole company."
"Oh, indeed! And who was this bird Ph[oe]nix?"
"Your cousin, dear Felix," said the baroness, counting the stitches in her work; "she looked really magnificent last night. I was quite surprised myself; but she was universally admired."
Felix listened attentively. To hear Helen praised by her mother was such a new air that he did not trust his ears.
"It looks as if the last weeks--five, six, seven--had, after all, had a very happy effect upon her. She has eight, nine, ten--lost a good deal of her haughtiness; the Countess Grieben congratulated me on her modest, truly womanly manners."
"Pardon me, dear aunt," said Felix, most bitterly; "but I can hardly rejoice as much as you at this favorable change. I wish it had taken place a few weeks before. Perhaps I should then not be lying here helpless, like a horse who has been hamstrung;" and he struck the arm of his chair violently with his sound hand.
"I know you have some reason to complain of Helen," said the baroness; "but hatred and revenge are very unchristian feelings, especially between relatives, whom nature has ordained for mutual love."
"Oh, certainly," interrupted Felix. "You are perfectly right, dear aunt! Our whole plan was built upon that supposition. What a pity, though, that Miss Helen did not care at all for this Christian love for our relatives!"
"You are bitter, Felix; and, as I said before, I admit that you may complain. But let us talk now of the matter that brought me here so early in the morning. The state of your health, dear Felix, causes me such great concern that I have been thinking of it all last night, and now I have formed a plan. You must start, and as soon as possible, on your trip to Italy."
Felix was destined to-day to pass from one astonishment into another.
The physicians had advised this trip urgently for a fortnight; Anna Maria had opposed it as strenuously, because neither Felix, as she thought, nor she herself could at that moment afford to provide the necessary means. All of a sudden these means were forthcoming! All who knew the consistency of the baroness must have known that only a very extraordinary reason could have produced so sudden a change in her views.
What this reason was Felix did not learn in the further course of the conversation. He did not care particularly to know it. The last days and nights, full of pain, had broken his spirit; the frivolous haughtiness which he had so far boastingly exhibited had given way to mournful nervousness, in which but one thought remained uppermost--the desire to be well again at any cost. For this great purpose any means were welcome. If his aunt was willing to furnish the means for his travels, which he knew were indispensable for his recovery, well!--and all the better, the more she gave! Why she gave--why she gave now, after having declared it only a few days before utterly impossible to raise the means--what did he care for that? No more than a man who is in danger of drowning inquires from whence the saving log comes swimming down to which he clings at the very last moment.