"Do you really think, sir," said the princess, trembling with rage and secret fear, "there is a particle of truth in the whole thing, and that I would be caught in such an ill-made snare? That I do not see what it all means? That you have only thought of this impudent invention because I am unwilling to waste the rest of my fortune upon your mad dissipation?"
"Really, Alexandrina. Hearing you speak so, one might actually believe your conscience was as clean as my gloves. Why, you are blinded by anger, my dearest! Please observe, this letter contains things of which I have no idea, nor can have an idea, _e. g._, the name of the good man in question. You know I have never been so happy as to hear yet whose blood flows in the veins of my son" (the count's teeth were glittering in a perfectly frightful manner); "and besides, you have an infallible means to ascertain the genuineness of this letter. Send for the writer!
Twenty-one years will hardly have changed him so much that you should not recognize him."
"You think I am not going to do that? You are mistaken. I insist upon your bringing me this man of straw, with whom you wish to frighten me.
Give me the letter."
"_Avec le plus grand plaisir!_" replied the count "There! But, Alexandrina, I hope the interview will take place in my presence, or I shall not be able to contain myself for jealousy."
"Devil!"
"Oh, my angel! Do you call the man so to whom you owe so much?"
"Owe so much? to you? I, who picked you up from the gutter?"
"But I have given you my good name."
"Good name! A name dragged through every mean vice, and every blackest sin----"
"And yet good enough for the friend and----"
"Have a care!"
"Why? The heavens are high, and the czar is afar off. But you are quite right in demanding that too much importance should not be attached to this connection. The whole world knows pretty well that, in some respects, no rank or position came amiss to you."
"That goes too far. I----"
"Keep quiet, _ma chere_! I hear a carriage coming. No doubt, our dear ones. We must give them an example of conjugal love."
It was perhaps two hours later. Helen was wandering restlessly up and down in her superb room. Nadeska had left her, and the baroness, fatigued by the journey, had retired to her chamber. Helen could not sleep. Her soul was oppressed by an indescribable anxiety, which was all the more painful because so vague. She felt in the midst of all the splendor by which she was surrounded like a child in an enchanted castle, where in every corner into which the light does not penetrate fully, and behind every silk curtain gently waving in a current of air, some unspeakable horror might be lurking. Was this the realization of her proudest hopes? She could not get rid of the impression made upon her by her reception in the salon of the princess. She still felt her icy-cold lips on her forehead; she still saw the repulsive, impudent smile of the count and the dark frown of the prince. It was an uncomfortable spirit that dwelt in this house. And she had surrendered herself to this spirit; she had sacrificed to it her freedom, her young girl's dreams, her future! And what was she to gain in return! High rank, great wealth--how little all that seemed to her at this moment!
How willingly she would have given it all up for the mere shadow of the unspeakable happiness she had enjoyed last summer, when she stepped from her cool apartments into the golden morning light of the park, and slowly sauntered about between the bright flowers, expecting at every turn around a shrub or a bosquet to meet Oswald! How far, how irrecoverably far, this was lying behind her! As far as the paradise of her childish years, which no longing of ours, no return of spring, can bring back to us! She was quite surprised, herself, that all her thoughts were wandering back to-day to Grenwitz; that a thousand little scenes, which she thought she had long forgotten, came back to her now: a walk with Bruno and Oswald through the fields when the evening sun was hanging low, like a huge ball of fire, near the horizon, and bright lights were playing fitfully over the golden grain, while the larks were jubilant high above them in the deep blue of the heavens. And again, one hot afternoon, when she had fallen asleep on a bench in a shady avenue in the garden, tired by the monotonous humming and whizzing of insects, she awoke at the moment when somebody--it was Bruno--was placing a wreath of dark-red roses on her head, while a few steps from them, somebody else--it was Oswald--was peeping from behind a tree. And ever it was Bruno and Oswald who gave life to the idyllic picture--Elysian forms in Elysian fields. Oh, were not both dead? Helen had suffered indescribably when Oswald's elopement with Emily had become the common gossip of Grunwald; for only now, when a whole world parted him from her, she felt how dear this man had been to her. She tried, it is true, to master her passion and to be reconciled to her fate, which she had after all brought upon herself. But she caught herself only too frequently comparing her betrothed with Oswald, a comparison which invariably resulted in the conviction that the former lacked everything which had made Oswald so attractive: the graceful, elegant carriage, the bright and yet so tender eyes, the deep voice with its gentle music, the ever-changing and ever-interesting expression of his face. She had never felt as deeply as this evening how little her heart had to say to her betrothed. She recollected with a shudder that when the drums had beat in the streets, when the war of the excited multitude had been heard from afar, and the prince had started up to hasten to his post, she had felt only that this gave her a good opportunity to retire to her rooms.
And the poor girl's heart grew heavier and her eyes dimmer. She thought she was thoroughly wretched; she pitied herself that she was so alone and had no one to share her sorrow. But had she not prepared her isolation herself? Had she not repelled good people, who had come to her with open hearts, by her cool politeness? How she now wished for good old Miss Bear; for clever, cordial Sophie Roban! But was not Sophie in town? Might she not look up the friend whom she had so sadly neglected during the last days in Grunwald? Helen clung to this thought, while she hid her beautiful face in the silken cushions;--proud Helen! who looked as if she could go on her path, lonely, like a bright star, unconcerned about the doings of poor men far down in their humble huts!
CHAPTER XI.
The excitement in town grew daily. In vain were troops massed by whole brigades, and held ready day and night in their barracks; in vain every assembly was dispersed with the bayonet, and the loudest criers arrested. Every day brought new and more serious disturbances. The assemblages of the people, especially on the large public squares near the palace, became more formidable; the threatening cries and whistlings and cheers of the masses were heard more frequently; and the soldiers, maddened by their incessant duties, could less and less resist the terribly provoking irritation. Paving stones on one side, and drawn swords on the other, encountered each other daily and hourly.
The number of more or less seriously wounded persons which were carried to the public hospitals had become considerable. The last evening had been especially fearful. A detachment of cuirassiers of the guards, galloping forward with loose reins and drawn swords, had driven a large crowd of people into one of the smaller streets that opened upon the square near the palace, and at the other end a picket of dragoons prevented escape. There ensued a scene of fearful confusion and consternation in the crowd, thus hemmed in on both sides, while the men were forcing their horses pitilessly into the thickest, striking right and left with their heavy swords. The howl of anguish of women and children, mingled with the cries of rage of the men, and the curses of the soldiers, while imprecations and threats came down from the windows of the houses, where peaceful men were frightened at their quiet work.
The commotion quickly spread further and further, and even in remote parts of the city groups were formed in the streets, when the report came that the imperial city on the Danube, generally looked upon as thoughtless and frivolous, had had a complete revolution, and that the oldest master of diplomacy, the cunning ruler of a whole generation of men, had at last been driven from the scene of his triumphs. A thousand cheers arose when the good news was proclaimed, and the great results which a month before would have been looked upon as impossible, were made known in detail. They asked one another why they should submit any longer to misrule and ill-treatment by a privileged caste, if it required but a firm resolve to establish freedom and equality among them.
While thus even the most indifferent were gradually drawn into the whirlpool of the revolution, one man sat in apathetic calmness in his room, unconcerned about what was going on around him.
When Oswald returned the night before, after wandering aimlessly through the crowded streets, and found his room empty and Emily's letter on the table, he had laughed out so loud that an old lady who had been living next door for twelve years was frightened out of her first slumbers. Then he had thrown himself on the sofa. He was too wearied and exhausted to be able to sleep. But after a while he started up with a cry. He had dreamt that he was walking with Emily arm in arm by the side of a precipice, whispering of love and caressing her hand, and suddenly she had fallen away from his side down into the deep, from rock to rock into fearful abysses, from which now cries for help and groans of anguish were rising up to him. Oswald tried in vain to shake off the horrible image; it had imprinted itself too deeply on his over-excited mind. He would have sought rest and oblivion in sleep, but he felt no longer tired. A thousand thoughts and images were chasing each other wildly through his head, and he found himself unable to lay the weird ghosts. He could only look on. Scenes of former days ran into events of recent date, and the fat gentleman who had been in their coupe from the last station suddenly changed into the public crier of his native town, whose big bell he had followed often as a boy.
Oswald made a violent effort to rouse himself. He rang the bell and ordered the fire to be rekindled. Then he sat down before the blaze and recalled the first evenings at Paris, as they were sitting in their modest lodgings in the fifth story of a house in the Quartier Latin before the fire-place, and congratulated each other that at last they were "at home." They had tried to make each other forget their troubles and anxieties by jesting and caressing, and forming a hundred bright plans for the future. But the golden, hopeful future had become a dark, comfortless present; the jests had ceased, and the caresses had become colder and colder. And then came evenings when Oswald came home out of sorts and out of temper, having in vain called upon publishers who "could not avail themselves of" his manuscripts; when he found Emily in tears, and had to tell himself that he and he only was responsible for these tears. Then came wretched scenes, when regret at their own folly sought concealment under reproaches and accusations of fickleness and heartlessness, and the tender little flower of love was ruthlessly trodden under foot in the fierce encounter. And yet it had always been Emily who, good-natured and light-hearted as she was, and full of tender love for Oswald, had offered her hand to make peace. "I do not reproach you," she had often said; "I should be perfectly happy if I could but see you happy. But to see you unhappy, and unhappy through my fault, that makes me wretched." Had she spoken the truth? Oswald had then doubted it; now an inner voice told him that it was so, and that she would never have left him if he had not driven her from him. He took the letter he had found on the table and stared at the "Dear, dear Oswald!" written by Emily's trembling hand, and then marked out by another hand, and the two stains on the paper--the trace of tears she had wept at parting with him. Oswald dropped the letter into the fire, and groaned aloud as he saw how eagerly it seized the paper and consumed it, and the hot draft carried away the black ashes. So there was an end of that also.
And as he sat staring into the smouldering embers, his head resting in his hand, the fever spirits began their mad dance once more. Faces of marvellous beauty looked at him with large, loving eyes, and then changed in a moment into grinning negro grimaces; Rector Clemens and Professor Snellius came walking solemnly in grave converse and broke it off abruptly to dance a wild Mazurka; Melitta, Helen, and Emily floated by on a rosy cloud which changed into dismal rain, and the three witches of Macbeth were shaking their snaky locks. Thus the whole wearisome night passed away. When twilight began to peep in at the windows the spirits grew paler and paler. Oswald opened a window and let the cool morning air play around his heated temples. This refreshed him somewhat. But as the streets began to become more lively he closed the window again and let down the curtains; he wanted to see and to hear nothing of life, for he hated life.
Emily's escape had hardly been noticed in the house. The only one who knew more about it, the porter, felt no disposition to speak about it, as he was not quite sure of his own share in the matter. It was thought, therefore, that the lady had not been the gentleman's wife, as was first believed, but his sister, and that the other gentleman who had come for her had been her husband. The times, moreover, were too eventful to leave much room for such small matters.
Such were Mrs. Captain Black's ideas when she called next day at noon on Oswald, after the custom of the house. For it was the lady's notion that she ought to inquire in person after the welfare and the wishes of those of her guests who seemed to propose staying there for some time.
This was partly a matter of courtesy with her, and partly prompted by her good old heart. She had a twofold interest in Oswald. The young man's appearance, the expression of his eyes, and the tone of his voice, had struck her, and reminded her wonderfully of long by-gone days, and of a person whom she had loved tenderly and whose loss she had never yet been able to forget. Then the young man came direct from France, from where that unfortunate young friend had also come, and where she had probably died. It is true the poor girl had never given a sign of life, and it was highly improbable therefore that she was still alive, but that did not keep Mrs. Black from feeling glad whenever a Frenchman came to her house, as it looked like another chance to hear something of the poor girl.
The good old lady was, therefore, not a little astonished and grieved when she saw how pale and haggard Oswald looked this morning, a mere shadow of the stately young man of last night. He had had a bad night to be sure. It must have been a very bad night to pull down a young man so grievously. Should she send for the doctor? No? But a cup of strong beef tea with an egg stirred in? _Qu'en dites-vous, Monsieur?_ The good old lady tripped away to attend to the beef tea herself, as no one else could make it as well. And while she was busy about it she shook her gray head again and again, because Monsieur Oswald--the stranger had given that name--spoke German so very well, and looked so very sick and unhappy, and yet had some resemblance to the lost one. Her eyes filled with tears and she decided to ask him about the cause of his grief at the risk of being considered indiscreet.
With this desire she entered Oswald's room once more and found the young man in the same position in which she had left him. He was sitting on the sofa, his arms crossed on his bosom, his eyes staring fixedly at an old French engraving, in which Andromeda was represented chained to the rock and guarded by a dragon, while Perseus was coming through the air to her rescue, with the gorgon's head in his hand. He had noticed the picture in the early twilight, and long tried to find out in the imperfect light what it could mean, till at last, as day broke, he found it out. The engraving was extravagant, as most pictures of that epoch. Andromeda was rather too small, a mere child in comparison with the very tall and slender hero, who was just putting one foot on the rock and preparing to strike a blow at the monster, which opened its huge mouth wide and stared at him with basilisk eyes.
Still, it was not without merit in the conception, nor without delicacy in the execution. The spark of hope which appeared in the girl's eyes and the whole of her childish, beautiful features, and the heroic indignation in the face of the youth, were well rendered; while the landscape--a lonely rock in the boundless ocean, with the sun rising above the horizon and the first rays trembling on the waves up to the rock--showed something of Claude Lorraine's cheerful vigor and grandeur. Oswald had looked at the picture again and again with a feeling of painful sadness. The beautiful meaning of the ancient myth--that bold courage carries the happy possessor with god-like wings over land and sea, that the hero overcomes danger by a mere glance, and finally that for him alone there blooms the sweet flower of love and beauty on the rude rock in the vast inhospitable ocean of life--all this had reminded the dreamer painfully of what he also had already called his own of love and beauty; but only, alas! to lose it in a short time and forever, forever!
Even now--when Mrs. Black at his request took a seat on the sofa, and told him all she knew about the excitement in the city, the bloody scenes which had taken place last night quite near by, in Brother street, the large assemblies of people Unter den Linden, and the sad times in which everything seemed to be turned upside down--even now Oswald could not take his eyes from the picture. The old lady noticed it and said:
"Yes! It was just so twenty-five years ago! It used to belong to a countryman of yours, a dear old gentleman who has lived here many years, and whom I loved like a brother. The picture is here, but he----"
She sighed so grievously that Oswald, whom his own sorrow had not made insensible to the sorrows of others, asked her kindly:
"He died, the old gentleman, did he?"
"I do not know," replied the old lady. "He went into the wide world in order to save a girl whom I had brought up as my own child; a sweet, lovely creature; but he did not come back, and she did not come back, and I grieve over my loss, although it is now nearly twenty-five years old. Have you, monsieur--ah! it is foolish in me to ask, but after all nothing is impossible in this world--have you, monsieur, ever heard anything of a Mademoiselle Marie Montbert and a Monsieur d'Estein?"
The old lady had asked the question so often, and received so often nothing but a curt: _Non madame!_ in reply, that she scarcely noticed Oswald's regretful shake of the head, and continued with animation:
"Ah, I knew it was so! No one ever heard of them. The world is so large, and there are so many people in it! And in this great world and this multitude of people how soon are two unhappy beings forgotten!"
The manner of the old lady was, with all her ingenuousness, so refined and dignified; the deep-sunk eyes, still full of expression, looked so gentle and kind; and her voice had such a true, good sound, that Oswald felt strangely moved, and begged her with cordial warmth to tell him something more about the two persons whose unhappy fate she deplored so painfully after so long a time. Mrs. Black smoothed her black-silk apron, and told him in simple words a simple, touching story.
Her husband, a brave but wild and reckless man, had compelled her for years before he lost his life on the battle-field of Waterloo to provide for her own support. She had taken lodgings in the rear part of the building which she now owned, and rented out the larger part of the rooms to single gentlemen. She had always tried to keep up pleasant relations with her "foster-children," but with none of them had she been on as friendly a footing as with a certain Monsieur d'Estein, a descendant of French refugees, who supported himself by giving lessons in the tongue of his ancestors. Monsieur d'Estein was an old bachelor of kind heart but very eccentric, who had fallen out with the whole world, and yet shared his last mouthful of bread with any one who asked him for it. He had his own ideas about everything, and brooded constantly over plans how to overthrow the whole world, while he led all the time a most simple, harmless life.
Monsieur d'Estein had been living with her several years and had become a warm friend of hers, who listened patiently to all her complaints about hard times and domestic troubles, when one fine day a Colonel Montbert, of the French army, came and called on his relation, Monsieur d'Estein. The colonel was under orders for Russia--it was in 1812--and he was accompanied by a little daughter of eight, a lovely child, whom the father loved tenderly, and perhaps all the more tenderly as she stood perfectly alone in the world, and had no one on earth to love and protect her except her father. Until now she had followed the colonel in all his campaigns, but the brave old soldier trembled at the idea of exposing his only treasure to the dangers of a winter campaign, the results of which he might even then have anticipated. As he had been in Berlin in 1807, and had then made Monsieur d'Estein's acquaintance, he came now once more to ask him to take care of Marie till he returned; and if he should not return, there were the family papers, and a large sum of money in gold and bills of exchange; and the friends looked at each other and shook hands. The colonel kissed his little girl, promised to bring her a sleigh with two reindeer from Russia, kissed her once more, cried: _Adieu, ma chere! Adieu, ma petite!_ mounted his horse and was gone.
Colonel Montbert never fulfilled his promise about the sleigh and the reindeer. His little girl waited and waited for the sleigh and the father till she was a tall young lady, but sleigh and father never came.
Marie had grown up a tall, fair girl, so beautiful that the whole neighborhood called her, unanimously, pretty Marie. She was a good girl too, with a good heart, that could be merry with the joyous and weep with the sorrowful. Her only fault was an over-active imagination, a fondness of strange, extraordinary things--an inheritance from her father, the French colonel of cavalry, whose adventurous, fantastic disposition Monsieur d'Estein said approached very near to insanity.
This peculiarity of the girl caused much anxiety to Monsieur d'Estein and to Mrs. Black, but especially to the former, whose plain, straight-forward mind was utterly averse to everything irrational or fantastic. "The girl ought to have no time for dreams," he used to say; "she must learn to think and to act. She ought to have a counterpoise to her gay dream-world in the prosaic reality of life. No man ought to live in castles in the air." According to these views he sketched out a plan of education for little Marie, with which Mrs. Black never could fully agree, in spite of the unbounded respect she had for Monsieur d'Estein's intelligence and character. Marie was to dress in the simplest way, like the children of humble mechanics; she was to learn every kind of domestic labor: and when she was grown up Monsieur d'Estein carried his oddity so far that he sent her to a respectable milliner. "One could never know but that it might become useful to her in after life." Mrs. Black shook her head, but she could not be angry at the old gentleman's odd notions when she saw how well he meant it, and especially how successful he was. For the girl grew brighter and fairer every day, and looked, in her simple calico dress and her plain straw bonnet, as refined and as distinguished as the greatest lady in the land.
Mrs. Black was proud of the girl. She had never had any children of her own, but she felt as if she could never have loved one of her own better. And was she not the child's mother? Had she not watched over her in health, and nursed her in sickness? And was the girl not as fondly attached to her as a daughter could be to a mother? Mrs. Black was almost jealous of this love (she had had so little love in her life) and did not like it that Marie had not evidently more confidence in her than in her adopted father. But the latter was, for his part, not less jealous. Mrs. Black even sometimes suspected that monsieur was cherishing very different feelings for his beautiful niece, as he called her, from those of an uncle for his niece, and that his system of education which confined Marie very strictly to the house, might have been prompted by other than pedagogic considerations. Monsieur was at that time only forty years old. It was the mere shadow of a suspicion, but subsequent events gave it strength.
One evening--it was a Sunday--monsieur returned from his promenade with Marie very much out of temper. Marie also looked excited, and showed traces of tears in her beautiful eyes. She went to bed as soon as supper was over, and Mrs. Black begged monsieur to tell her what had happened, till he at last consented.
Marie and he had been walking up and down in the long avenues of the public park, chatting cozily with each other, and had then gone into one of the public gardens, there to order some refreshments for Marie and himself. They had just taken their seats at a table when two gentlemen, who had before been sitting at a distance, had come and taken seats near them. Monsieur, who turned his back to them, had not noticed them, and only became aware of their presence when he saw Marie, who was talking to him, cast half-curious, half-embarrassed glances at somebody behind him. He turned round to see what was the matter. At the same moment one of the gentlemen approached their table.
He was a remarkably handsome man--monsieur could not deny that, in spite of his irritation--a lofty, noble figure, a superb head, a fine though somewhat exhausted face, large deep-blue eyes, with a haughty and yet kindly expression. He lifted his hat and in very good French--monsieur and Marie had as usual conversed in French--he asked leave for himself and his companion to join their company. Monsieur was the most courteous man in the world, but he said there had been something in the manner of the distinguished stranger which had filled him instantly with a violent aversion against him, and he had therefore replied dryly and curtly that he and mademoiselle preferred remaining alone. Thereupon a slight altercation between him and the stranger had taken place, which ended in his rising and leaving the garden with Marie, pursued by the scornful laugh of the two gentlemen. From that evening Marie showed a decided change in her whole manner. Formerly gay and cheerful, she now hung her head, turned pale and red by turns, was at one time immoderately merry and at another time wretchedly sad.
Neither Mrs. Black nor monsieur knew what to make of it. Misfortune would have it that monsieur must be taken sick just then, so that Mrs.
Black had to spend nearly her whole time in his room nursing him, and Marie consequently was left much to herself. Formerly monsieur had regularly gone for her to the place where she learnt her profession; now she had to come home alone. What happened to her during these days, into what snares she had fallen, Mrs. Black never found out. But one morning, when she came to wake the poor girl, she found the room empty, and a little note on the table, in which the unfortunate child stated that irresistible reasons, which she could not now explain, compelled her to leave town; that she begged her benefactors with tears in her eyes to forgive her if she rewarded them for their great love with apparent ingratitude, and that she hoped to God the day would come, and come soon, on which all this sorrow would be changed into joy.