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----"
"_Will_ know? 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 roue, 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 roue 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.