"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.
CHAPTER XV.
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 weapons _against_ you, which I until then had been using _for_ you. 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.