WHAT CAME OF A SHILLING
The surgeon, who attended us both, loudly admired our mutual delicacy
in sparing arteries and vital organs: but a bullet cuts a rougher
pathway than the neat steel blade, and I was prostrate when the prince
came to press my hand on his departure for his quarters at Laibach. The
utterly unreasonable nature of a duel was manifested by his declaring
to me, that he was now satisfied I did not mean to insult him and then
laugh at him. We must regard it rather as a sudorific for feverish
blood and brains. I felt my wound acutely, seeing his brisk step when
he retired. Having overthrown me bodily, it threw my heart back to its
first emotions, and I yearned to set eyes on my father, with a haunting
sense that I had of late injured him and owed him reparation. It
vanished after he had been in my room an hour, to return when he had
quitted it, and incessantly and inexplicably it went and came in this
manner. He was depressed. I longed for drollery, relieved only by
chance allusions to my beloved one, whereas he could not conceal his
wish to turn the stupid duel to account.
'Pencil a line to her,' he entreated me, and dictated his idea of a
moving line, adding urgently, that the crippled letters would be
affecting to her, as to the Great Frederick his last review of his
invalid veterans. 'Your name—the signature of your name alone, darling
Richie,' and he traced a crooked scrawl with a forefinger,—“Still,
dearest angel, in contempt of death and blood, I am yours to eternity,
Harry Lepel Richmond, sometimes called Roy—a point for your decision in
the future, should the breath everlastingly devoted to the most
celestial of her sex, continue to animate the frame that would rise on
wings to say adieu! adieu!”—Richie, just a sentence?'
He was distracting.
His natural tenderness and neatness of hand qualified him for spreading
peace in a sick-room; but he was too full of life and his scheme, and
knowing me out of danger, he could not forbear giving his despondency
an outlet. I heard him exclaim in big sighs: 'Heavens! how near!' and
again, 'She must hear of it!' Never was man so incorrigibly dramatic.
He would walk up to a bookcase and take down a volume, when the
interjectional fit waxed violent, flip the pages, affecting a
perplexity he would assuredly have been struck by had he perused them,
and read, as he did once,—'Italy, the land of the sun! and she is to be
hurried away there, and we are left to groan. The conspiracy is
infamous! One of the Family takes it upon himself to murder us! and she
is to be hurried out of hearing! And so we are to have the blood of the
Roys spilt for nothing?—no!' and he shut up the book with a report, and
bounded to my side to beg pardon of me. From his particular abuse of
the margravine, the iteration of certain phrases, which he uttered to
denounce and defy them, I gathered that an interview had passed between
the two, and that she had notified a blockade against all letters
addressed to the princess. He half admitted having rushed to the palace
on his road to me.
'But, Richie,' said he, pressing me again to write the moving line, 'a
letter with a broad black border addressed by me might pass.' He looked
mournfully astute. 'The margravine might say to herself, “Here's Doctor
Death in full diploma come to cure the wench of her infatuation.” I am
but quoting the coarse old woman, Richie; confusion on her and me! for
I like her. It might pass in my handwriting, with a smudge for paternal
grief—it might. “To Her Serene Highness the Margravine of Rippau, etc.,
etc., etc., in trust for the Most Exalted the Princess of
Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld.” I transpose or omit a title or so. “Aha!” says
she, “there's verwirrung in Roy's poor head, poor fellow; the boy has
sunk to a certainty. Here (to the princess), it seems, my dear, this is
for you. Pray do not communicate the contents for a day or so, or a
month.”'
His imitation of the margravine was the pleasantest thing I heard from
him. The princess's maid and confidante, he regretted to state, was
incorruptible, which I knew. That line of Ottilia's writing, 'Violets
are over,' read by me in view of the root-mountain of the Royal House
of Princes, scoffed at me insufferably whenever my father showed me
these openings of his mind, until I was dragged down to think almost
that I had not loved the woman and noble soul, but only the glorified
princess—the carved gilt frame instead of the divine portrait! a
shameful acrid suspicion, ransacking my conscience with the thrusting
in of a foul torch here and there.
For why had I shunned him of late? How was it that he tortured me now?
Did I in no degree participate in the poignant savour of his scheme?
Such questionings set me flushing in deadly chills. My brain was weak,
my heart exhausted, my body seemed truthful perforce and confessed on
the rack. I could not deny that I had partly, insensibly clung to the
vain glitter of hereditary distinction, my father's pitfall; taking it
for a substantial foothold, when a young man of wit and sensibility
and, mark you, true pride, would have made it his first care to trample
that under heel. Excellent is pride; but oh! be sure of its foundations
before you go on building monument high. I know nothing to equal the
anguish of an examination of the basis of one's pride that discovers it
not solidly fixed; an imposing, self-imposing structure, piled upon
empty cellarage. It will inevitably, like a tree striking bad soil,
betray itself at the top with time. And the anguish I speak of will be
the sole healthy sign about you. Whether in the middle of life it is
adviseable to descend the pedestal altogether, I dare not say. Few take
the precaution to build a flight of steps inside—it is not a labour to
be proud of; fewer like to let themselves down in the public eye—it
amounts to a castigation; you must, I fear, remain up there, and accept
your chance in toppling over. But in any case, delude yourself as you
please, your lofty baldness will assuredly be seen with time.
Meanwhile, you cannot escape the internal intimations of your
unsoundness. A man's pride is the front and headpiece of his character,
his soul's support or snare. Look to it in youth. I have to thank the
interminable hours on my wretched sick-bed for a singularly beneficial
investigation of the ledger of my deeds and omissions and moral stock.
Perhaps it has already struck you that one who takes the trouble to sit
and write his history for as large a world as he can obtain, and shape
his style to harmonize with every development of his nature, can no
longer have much of the hard grain of pride in him. A proud
puppet-showman blowing into Pandaean pipes is an inconceivable object,
except to those who judge of characteristics from posture.
It began to be observed by others that my father was not the most
comforting of nurses to me. My landlady brought a young girl up to my
room, and introduced her under the name of Lieschen, saying that she
had for a long time been interested in me, and had been diligent in
calling to inquire for news of my condition. Commanded to speak for
herself, this Lieschen coloured and said demurely, 'I am in service
here, sir, among good-hearted people, who will give me liberty to watch
by you, for three hours of the afternoon and three of the early part of
the night, if you will honour me.'
My father took her shoulder between finger and thumb, and slightly
shook her to each ejaculation of his emphatic 'No! no! no! no! What! a
young maiden nurse to a convalescent young gentleman! Why, goodness
gracious me! Eh?'
She looked at me softly, and I said I wished her to come.
My father appealed to the sagacity of the matron. So jealous was he of
a suggested partner in his task that he had refused my earnest requests
to have Mr. Peterborough to share the hours of watching by my side. The
visits of college friends and acquaintances were cut very short, he
soon reduced them to talk in a hush with thumbs and nods and eyebrows;
and if it had not been so annoying to me, I could have laughed at his
method of accustoming the regular visitors to make ready, immediately
after greeting, for his affectionate dismissal of them. Lieschen went
away with the mute blessing of his finger on one of her modest dimples;
but, to his amazement, she returned in the evening. He gave her a
lecture, to which she listened attentively, and came again in the
morning. He was petrified. 'Idiots, insects, women, and the salt sea
ocean!' said he, to indicate a list of the untameables, without
distressing the one present, and, acknowledging himself beaten, he
ruefully accepted his holiday.
The girl was like sweet Spring in my room. She spoke of Sarkeld
familiarly. She was born in that neighbourhood, she informed me, and
had been educated by a dear great lady. Her smile of pleasure on
entering the room one morning, and seeing me dressed and sitting in a
grand-fatherly chair by the breezy window, was like a salutation of
returning health. My father made another stand against the usurper of
his privileges; he refused to go out.
'Then must I go,' said Lieschen, 'for two are not allowed here.'
'No! don't leave me,' I begged of her, and stretched out my hands for
hers, while she gazed sadly from the doorway. He suspected some
foolishness or he was actually jealous. 'Hum-oh!' He went forth with a
murmured groan.
She deceived me by taking her seat in perfect repose.
After smoothing her apron, 'Now I must go,' she said.
'What! to leave me here alone?'
She looked at the clock, and leaned out of the window.
'Not alone; oh, not alone!' the girl exclaimed. 'And please, please do
not mention me—presently. Hark! do you hear wheels? Your heart must not
beat. Now farewell. You will not be alone: at least, so I think. See
what I wear, dear Mr. Patient!' She drew from her bosom, attached to a
piece of blue ribbon, the half of an English shilling, kissed it, and
blew a soft farewell to me:
She had not been long gone when the Princess Ottilia stood in her
place.
A shilling tossed by an English boy to a couple of little foreign girls
in a woodman's hut!—you would not expect it to withstand the common
fate of silver coins, and preserve mysterious virtues by living
celibate, neither multiplying nor reduced, ultimately to play the part
of a powerful magician in bringing the boy grown man to the feet of an
illustrious lady, and her to his side in sickness, treasonably to the
laws of her station. The little women quarrelled over it, and snatched
and hid and contemplated it in secret, each in her turn, until the
strife it engendered was put an end to by a doughty smith, their
mother's brother, who divided it into equal halves, through which he
drove a hole, and the pieces being now thrown out of the currency, each
one wore her share of it in her bosom from that time, proudly appeased.
They were not ordinary peasant children, and happily for them they had
another friend that was not a bird of passage, and was endowed by
nature and position to do the work of an angel. She had them educated
to read, write, and knit, and learn pretty manners, and in good season
she took one of the sisters to wait on her own person. The second went,
upon her recommendation, into the household of a Professor of a
neighbouring University. But neither of them abjured her superstitious
belief in the proved merits of the talisman she wore. So when they saw
the careless giver again they remembered him; their gratitude was as
fresh as on that romantic morning of their childhood, and they resolved
without concert to serve him after their own fashion, and quickly spied
a way to it. They were German girls.
You are now enabled to guess more than was known to Ottilia and me of
the curious agency at work to shuffle us together. The doors of her
suite in the palace were barred against letters addressed to the
princess; the delivery of letters to her was interdicted, she
consenting, yet she found one: it lay on the broad walk of the
orange-trees, between the pleasure and the fruit-gardens, as if dropped
by a falcon in mid air. Ottilia beheld it, and started. Her little maid
walking close by, exclaimed, scuttling round in front of her the while
like an urchin in sabots,
'Ha! what is it? a snake? let me! let me!' The guileless mistress
replied, 'A letter!' Whereupon the maid said: 'Not a window near! and
no wall neither! Why, dearest princess, we have walked up and down here
a dozen times and not seen it staring at us! Oh, my good heaven!' The
letter was seized and opened, and Ottilia read:
'He who loves you with his heart has been cruelly used. They have shot
him. He is not dead. He must not die. He is where he has studied since
long. He has his medicine and doctors, and they say the bullet did not
lodge. He has not the sight that cures. Now is he, the strong young
man, laid helpless at anybody's mercy.'
She supped at her father's table, and amused the margravine and him
alternately with cards and a sonata. Before twelve at midnight she was
driving on the road to the University, saying farewell to what her mind
reverenced, so that her lover might but have sight of her. She imagined
I had been assassinated. For a long time, and most pertinaciously, this
idea dwelt with her. I could not dispossess her of it, even after
uttering the word 'duel' I know not how often. I had flatly to relate
the whole of the circumstances.
'But Otto is no assassin,' she cried out.
What was that she reverenced? It was what she jeopardized—her state,
her rank, her dignity as princess and daughter of an ancient House,
things typical to her of sovereign duties, and the high seclusion of
her name. To her the escapades of foolish damsels were abominable. The
laws of society as well as of her exalted station were in harmony with
her intelligence. She thought them good, but obeyed them as a subject,
not slavishly: she claimed the right to exercise her trained reason.
The modestest, humblest, sweetest of women, undervaluing nothing that
she possessed, least of all what was due from her to others, she could
go whithersoever her reason directed her, putting anything aside to act
justly according to her light. Nor would she have had cause to repent
had I been the man she held me to be. Even with me she had not behaved
precipitately. My course of probation was severe and long before she
allowed her heart to speak.
Pale from a sleepless night and her heart's weariful eagerness to be
near me, she sat by my chair, holding my hand, and sometimes looking
into my eyes to find the life reflecting hers as in a sunken well that
has once been a spring. My books and poor bachelor comforts caught her
attention between-whiles. We talked of the day of storm by the lake; we
read the unsigned letter. With her hand in mine I slept some minutes,
and awoke grasping it, doubting and terrified, so great a wave of life
lifted me up.
'No! you are not gone,' I sighed.
'Only come,' said she.
The nature of the step she had taken began to dawn on me.
'But when they miss you at the palace? Prince Ernest?'
'Hush! they have missed me already. It is done.' She said it smiling.
'Ottilia, will he take you away?'
'Us, dear, us.'
'Can you meet his anger?'
'Our aunt will be the executioner. We have a day of sweet hours before
she can arrive.'
'May I see her first?'
'We will both see her as we are now.'
'We must have prompt answers for the margravine.'
'None, Harry. I do not defend myself ever.'
Distant hills, and folds of receding clouds and skies beyond them, were
visible from my window, and beyond the skies I felt her soul.
'Ottilia, you were going to Italy?'
'Yes: or whither they please, for as long as they please. I wished once
to go, I have told you why. One of the series' (she touched the letter
lying on a reading-table beside her) 'turned the channel of all wishes
and intentions. My friends left me to fall at the mercy of this one. I
consented to the injunction that I should neither write nor receive
letters. Do I argue ill in saying that a trust was implied? Surely it
was a breach of the trust to keep me ignorant of the danger of him I
love! Now they know it. I dared not consult them—not my dear father!
about any design of mine when I had read this odd copybook writing, all
in brief sentences, each beginning “he” and “he.” It struck me like
thrusts of a sword; it illuminated me like lightning. That “he” was the
heart within my heart. The writer must be some clever woman or simple
friend, who feels for us very strongly. My lover assassinated, where
could I be but with him?'
Her little Ann coming in with chocolate and strips of fine white bread
to dip in it stopped my efforts to explain the distinction between an
assassination and a duel. I noticed then the likeness of Aennchen to
Lieschen.
'She has a sister here,' said Ottilia; 'and let her bring Lieschen to
visit me here this afternoon.'
Aennchen, with a blush, murmured, that she heard and would obey. I had
a memorable pleasure in watching my beloved eat and drink under my
roof.
The duel remained incomprehensible to her. She first frightened me by
remarking that duels were the pastime of brainless young men. Her next
remark, in answer to my repeated attempts to shield my antagonist from
a capital charge: 'But only military men and Frenchmen fight duels!'
accompanied by a slightly investigating glance of timid surprise, gave
me pain, together with a flashing apprehension of what she had
forfeited, whom offended, to rush to the succour of a duellist. I had
to repeat to her who my enemy was, so that there should be no further
mention of assassination. Prince Otto's name seemed to entangle her
understanding completely.
'Otto! Otto!' she murmured; 'he has, I have heard, been obliged by some
so-called laws of honour once or twice to—to—he is above suspicion of
treachery! To my mind it is one and the same, but I would not harshly
exclude the view the world puts on things; and I use the world's
language in saying that he could not do a dishonourable deed. How far
he honours himself is a question apart. That may be low enough, while
the world is full of a man's praises.'
She knew the nature of a duel. 'It is the work of soulless creatures!'
she broke through my stammered explanations with unwonted impatience,
and pressing my hand: 'Ah! You are safe. I have you still. Do you know,
Harry, I am not yet able to endure accidents and misadventures: I have
not fortitude to meet them, or intelligence to account for them. They
are little ironical laughter. Say we build so high: the lightning
strikes us:—why build at all? The Summer fly is happier. If I had lost
you! I can almost imagine that I should have asked for revenge. For why
should the bravest and purest soul of my worship be snatched away? I am
not talking wisdom, only my shaken self will speak just now! I pardon
Otto, though he has behaved basely.'
'No, not basely,' I felt bound to plead on his behalf, thinking, in
spite of a veritable anguish of gathering dread, that she had become
enlightened and would soon take the common view of our case; 'not
basely. He was excessively irritated, without cause in my opinion; he
simply misunderstood certain matters. Dearest, you have nations
fighting: a war is only an exaggerated form of duelling.'
'Nations at war are wild beasts,' she replied. 'The passions of these
hordes of men are not an example for a living soul. Our souls grow up
to the light: we must keep eye on the light, and look no lower. Nations
appear to me to have no worse than a soiled mirror of themselves in
mobs. They are still uncivilized: they still bear a resemblance to the
old monsters of the mud. Do you not see their claws and fangs, Harry?
Do you find an apology in their acts for intemperate conduct? Men who
fight duels appear in my sight no nobler than the first desperate
creatures spelling the cruel A B C of the passions.'
'No, nor in mine,' I assented hastily. 'We are not perfect. But hear
me. Yes, the passions are cruel. Circumstances however—I mean, there
are social usages—Ay, if one were always looking up! But should we not
be gentle with our comparisons if we would have our views in
proportion?'
She hung studiously silent, and I pursued:
'I trust you so much as my helper and my friend that I tell you what we
do not usually tell to women—the facts, and the names connected with
them. Sooner or later you would have learnt everything. Beloved, I do
not wait to let you hear it by degrees, to be reconciled to it
piecemeal.'
'And I forgive him,' she sighed. 'I scarcely bring myself to believe
that Harry has bled from Otto's hand.'
'It was the accident of the case, Ottilia. We had to meet.'
'To meet?'
'There are circumstances when men will not accept apologies;
they—we—heaven knows, I was ready to do all that a man could do to
avoid this folly—wickedness; give it the worst of titles!'
'It did not occur accidentally?' she inquired. Her voice sounded
strange, half withheld in the utterance.
'It occurred,' said I, feeling my strength ebb and despair set in, 'it
occurred—the prince compelled me to the meet him.'
'But my cousin Otto is no assassin?
'Compelled, I say: that is, he conceived I had injured him, and left me
no other way of making amends.'
Her defence of Otto was in reality the vehement cherishing of her idea
of me. This caused her bewilderment, and like a barrier to the flowing
of her mind it resisted and resisted. She could not suffer herself to
realize that I was one of the brainless young savages, creatures with
claws and fangs.
Her face was unchanged to me. The homeliness of her large mild eyes
embraced me unshadowed, and took me to its inner fire unreservedly.
Leaning in my roomy chair, I contemplated her at leisure while my heart
kept saying 'Mine! mine!' to awaken an active belief in its possession.
Her face was like the quiet morning of a winter day when cloud and sun
intermix and make an ardent silver, with lights of blue and faint fresh
rose; and over them the beautiful fold of her full eyebrow on the
eyelid like a bending upper heaven. Those winter mornings are divine.
They move on noiselessly. The earth is still, as if awaiting. A wren
warbles, and flits through the lank drenched brambles; hill-side opens
green; elsewhere is mist, everywhere expectancy. They bear the veiled
sun like a sangreal aloft to the wavy marble flooring of stainless
cloud.
She was as fair. Gazing across her shoulder's gentle depression, I
could have desired to have the couchant brow, and round cheek, and
rounding chin no more than a young man's dream of woman, a picture
alive, without the animating individual awful mind to judge of me by my
acts. I chafed at the thought that one so young and lovely should
meditate on human affairs at all. She was of an age to be maidenly
romantic: our situation favoured it. But she turned to me, and I was
glad of the eyes I knew. She kissed me on the forehead.
'Sleep,' she whispered.
I feigned sleep to catch my happiness about me.
Some disenchanting thunder was coming, I was sure, and I was right. My
father entered.
'Princess!' He did amazed and delighted homage, and forthwith
uncontrollably poured out the history of my heroism, a hundred words
for one;—my promptitude in picking the prince's glove up on my sword's
point, my fine play with the steel, my scornful magnanimity, the
admiration of my fellow-students;—every line of it; in stupendous
language; an artillery celebration of victory. I tried to stop him.
Ottilia rose, continually assenting, with short affirmatives, to his
glorifying interrogations—a method he had of recapitulating the main
points. She glanced to right and left, as if she felt caged.
'Is it known?' I heard her ask, in the half audible strange voice which
had previously made me tremble.
'Known? I certify to you, princess,'—the unhappy man spouted his
withering fountain of interjections over us anew; known in every Court
and garrison of Germany! Known by this time in Old England! And, what
was more, the correct version of it was known! It was known that the
young Englishman had vanquished his adversary with the small sword, and
had allowed him, because he had raged demoniacally on account of his
lamed limb, to have a shot in revenge.
'The honour done me by the princess in visiting me is not to be known,'
I summoned energy enough to say.
She shook her head.
My father pledged himself to the hottest secresy, equivalent to a calm
denial of the fact, if necessary.
'Pray be at no trouble,' she addressed him.
The 'Where am I?' look was painful in her aspect.
It led me to perceive the difference of her published position in
visiting a duellist lover instead of one assassinated. In the latter
case, the rashness of an hereditary virgin princess avowing her
attachment might pass condoned or cloaked by general compassion. How
stood it in the former? I had dragged her down to the duellist's level!
And as she was not of a nature to practise concealments, and scorned to
sanction them, she was condemned, seeing that concealment as far as
possible was imperative, to suffer bitterly in her own esteem. This,
the cruellest, was the least of the evils. To keep our names disjoined
was hopeless. My weakened frame and mental misery coined tears when
thoughts were needed.
Presently I found the room empty of our poor unconscious tormentor.
Ottilia had fastened her hand to mine again.
'Be generous,' I surprised her by saying. 'Go back at once. I have seen
you! Let my father escort you the road. You will meet the margravine,
or some one. I think, with you, it will be the margravine, and my
father puts her in good humour. Pardon a wretched little scheme to save
you from annoyance! So thus you return within a day, and the
margravine, shelters you. Your name will not be spoken. But go at once,
for the sake of Prince Ernest. I have hurt him already; help me to
avoid doing him a mortal injury. It was Schwartz who drove you? our old
Schwartz! Old Warhead! You see, we may be safe; only every fresh minute
adds to the danger. And another reason for going—another—'
'Ah!' she breathed, 'my Harry will talk himself into a fever.'
'I shall have it if the margravine comes here.'
'She shall not be admitted.'
'Or if I hear her, or hear that she has come! Consent at once, and
revive me. Oh! I am begging you to leave me, and wishing it with all my
soul. Think over what I have done. Do not write to me. I shall see the
compulsion of mere kindness between the lines. You consent. Your wisdom
I never doubt—I doubt my own.'
'When it is yours you would persuade me to confide in?' said she, with
some sorrowful archness.
Wits clear as hers could see that I had advised well, except in
proposing my father for escort. It was evidently better that she should
go as she came.
I refrained from asking her what she thought of me now. Suing for
immediate pardon would have been like the applying of a lancet to a
vein for blood: it would have burst forth, meaning mere words coloured
by commiseration, kindness, desperate affection, anything but her
soul's survey of herself and me; and though I yearned for the comfort
passion could give me, I knew the mind I was dealing with, or, rather,
I knew I was dealing with a mind; and I kept my tongue silent. The talk
between us was of the possible date of my recovery, the hour of her
return to the palace, the writer of the unsigned letters, books we had
read apart or peeped into together. She was a little quicker in speech,
less meditative. My sensitive watchfulness caught no other indication
of a change.
My father drove away an hour in advance of the princess to encounter
the margravine.
'By,' said he, rehearsing his exclamation of astonishment and delight
at meeting her, 'by the most miraculous piece of good fortune
conceivable, dear madam. And now comes the question, since you have
condescended to notice a solitary atom of your acquaintance on the
public highroad, whether I am to have the honour of doubling the
freight of your carriage, or you will deign to embark in mine? But the
direction of the horses' heads must be reversed, absolutely it must, if
your Highness would repose in a bed to-night. Good. So. And now, at a
conversational trot, we may happen to be overtaken by acquaintances.'
I had no doubt of his drawing on his rarely-abandoned seven-league
boots of jargon, once so delicious to me, for the margravine's
entertainment. His lack of discernment in treating the princess to it
ruined my patience.
The sisters Aennchen and Lieschen presented themselves a few minutes
before his departure. Lieschen dropped at her feet.
'My child,' said the princess, quite maternally, 'could you be quit of
your service with the Mahrlens for two weeks, think you, to do duty
here?'
'The Professor grants her six hours out of the twenty-four already,'
said I.
'To go where?' she asked, alarmed.
'To come here.'
'Here? She knows you? She did not curtsey to you.'
'Nurses do not usually do that.'
The appearance of both girls was pitiable; but having no suspicion of
the cause for it, I superadded,
'She was here this morning.'
'Ah! we owe her more than we were aware of.'
The princess looked on her kindly, though with suspense in the
expression.
'She told me of my approaching visitor,' I said.
'Oh! not told!' Lieschen burst out.
'Did you,'—the princess questioned her, and murmured to me, 'These
children cannot speak falsehoods,' they shone miserably under the
burden of uprightness 'did you make sure that I should come?'
Lieschen thought—she supposed. But why? Why did she think and suppose?
What made her anticipate the princess's arrival? This inveterate why
communicated its terrors to Aennchen, upon whom the princess turned
scrutinizing eyes, saying, 'You write of me to your sister?'
'Yes, princess.'
'And she to you?'
Lieschen answered: 'Forgive me, your Highness, dearest lady!'
'You offered yourself here unasked?'
'Yes, princess.'
'Have you written to others besides your sister?'
'Seldom, princess; I do not remember.'
'You know the obligation of signatures to letters?'
'Ah!'
'You have been remiss in not writing to me, child.'
'Oh, princess! I did not dare to.'
'You have not written to me?'
'Ah! princess, how dared I?'
'Are you speaking truthfully?'
The unhappy girls stood trembling. Ottilia spared them the leap into
the gulfs of confession. Her intuitive glance, assisted by a
combination of minor facts, had read the story of their misdeeds in a
minute. She sent them down to the carriage, suffering her culprits to
kiss her fingers; while she said to one: 'This might be a fable of a
pair of mice.'
When she was gone, after many fits of musing, the signification of it
was revealed to my slower brain. I felt that it could not but be an
additional shock to the regal pride of such a woman that these little
maidens should have been permitted to act forcibly on her destiny. The
mystery of the letters was easily explained as soon as a direct
suspicion fell on one of the girls who lived in my neighbourhood and
the other who was near the princess's person. Doubtless the revelation
of their effective mouse plot had its humiliating bitterness for her on
a day of heavy oppression, smile at it as she subsequently might. The
torture of heart with which I twisted the meaning of her words about
the pair of mice to imply that the pair had conspired to make a net for
an eagle and had enmeshed her, may have struck a vein of the truth. I
could see no other antithesis to the laudable performance of the single
mouse of fable. Lieschen, when she next appeared in the character of
nurse, met my inquiries by supplicating me to imitate her sister's
generous mistress, and be merciful.
She remarked by-and-by, of her own accord: 'Princess Ottilia does not
regret that she had us educated.'
A tender warmth crept round me in thinking that a mind thus lofty would
surely be, however severe in its insight, above regrets and
recantations.