Sperver's pale face and glowing eyes announced that events were on their
way. Yet he was calm, and did not seem surprised at my presence in
Knapwurst's room.
"Fritz," he said briefly, "I am come to fetch you." I rose without
answering and followed him. Scarcely were we out of the hut when he took
me by the arm and drew me on to the castle.
"Mademoiselle Odile wants to see you," he whispered.
"What! is she ill?"
"No, she is much better, but something or other that is strange is going
on. This morning about one o'clock, thinking that the count was nearly
breathing his last, I went to wake the countess; with my hand on the bell
my heart failed me. 'Why should I break her heart?' I said to myself,
'She will learn her misfortune only too soon; and then to wake her up in
the middle of the night, weak and frail as she is, after such shocks,
might kill her at a stroke.' I took a few minutes to consider, and then I
resolved I would take it all on myself. I returned to the count's room. I
looked in--not a soul was there! Impossible! the man was in the last
agonies of death. I ran into the corridor like a madman. No one was
there! Into the long gallery--no one! Then I lost my presence of mind,
and rushing again into the young countess's room, I rang again. This time
she appeared, crying out--'Is my father dead?' 'No.' 'Has he
disappeared?' 'Yes, madam. I had gone out for a minute--when I came in
again--' 'And Doctor Fritz, where is he?' 'In Hugh Lupus's tower.' 'In
_that_ tower?' She started. She threw a dressing-gown around her, took
her lamp, and went out. I stayed behind. A quarter of an hour after she
came back, her feet covered with snow, and so pale and so cold! She set
her lamp upon the chimney-piece, and looking at me fixedly, said--'Was it
you who put the doctor into that tower?' 'Yes, madam.' 'Unhappy man! you
will never know the extent of the harm you have done.' I was about to
answer, but she interrupted me--'No more; go and fasten every door and
lie down. I will sit up. To-morrow morning you will find Doctor Fritz at
Knapwurst's, and bring him to me. Make no noise, and mind, you have seen
nothing and know nothing!'"
"Is that all, Sperver?" I asked.
He nodded gravely.
"And about the count?"
"He is in again. He is better."
We had got to the antechamber. Gideon knocked at the door gently, then he
opened it, announcing--"Doctor Fritz."
I took a pace forward, and stood in the presence of Odile. Sperver had
retired, closing the door.
A strange impression crossed my mind at the sight of the young countess
standing pale and still, leaning upon the back of an arm-chair, her eyes
of feverish brightness, and robed in a long dress of rich black velvet.
But she stood calm and firm.
"Doctor," she said, motioning me to a chair, "pray sit down; I have a
very serious matter to speak to you about."
I obeyed in silence.
In her turn she sat down and seemed to be collecting her thoughts.
"Providence or an evil destiny, I know not which, has made you witness of
a mystery in which lies involved the honour of my family."
So she knew it all!
I sat confounded and astonished.
"Madam, believe me, it was but by chance--"
"It is useless," she interrupted; "I know it all, and it is frightful!"
Then, in a heartrending appealing voice, she cried--
"My father is not a guilty man!"
I shuddered, and with hands outstretched cried--
"Madam, I know it; I know that the life of your father has been one of
the noblest and loveliest."
Odile had half-risen from her seat, as if to protest, by anticipation,
against any supposition that might be injurious to her father. Hearing me
myself taking up his defence, she sank back again, and covering her face
with her hands, the tears began to flow.
"God bless you, sir!" she exclaimed. "I should have died with the very
thought that a breath of suspicion was harboured against him."
"Ah! madam, who could possibly attach any reality to the action of a
somnambulist?"
"That is quite true, sir; I had had that thought myself, but
appearances--pardon me--yet I feared--still I knew Doctor Fritz was a man
of honour."
"Pray, madam, be calm."
"No," she cried, "let me weep on. It is such a relief; for ten years I
have suffered in secret. Oh, how I suffered! That secret, so long shut up
in my breast, was killing me. I should soon have died, like my dear
mother. God has had pity upon me, and has sent you, and made you share it
with me. Let me tell you all, sir, do let me!"
She could speak no more. Sobs and tears broke her voice. So it always
is with proud and lofty natures. After having conquered grief, and
imprisoned it, buried, and, as it were, crushed down in the secret depths
of the mind, they seem happy, or, at any rate, indifferent to the eyes of
the uninformed around, and the eye of the most watchful observer might be
mistaken; but let a sudden shock break the seal, an unexpected rending of
a portion of the veil, then, as with the crash of a thunderstorm, the
tower in which the sufferer hid his sorrow falls in ruins to the ground.
The conquered foe rises more fierce than before his defeat and captivity;
he shakes with fury the prison doors, the frame trembles with long
shudderings, sobs and sighs heave the breast, the tears, too long
contained within bounds, overflow their swollen banks, bounding and
rushing as if after the heavy rain of a thunderstorm.
Such was Odile.
At length she lifted her beautiful head; she wiped her tear-stained
cheeks, and with her arm on the elbow of her chair, her cheek resting
on her hand, and her eyes tenderly fixed on a picture on the wall, she
resumed in slow and melancholy tones:--
"When I go back into the past, sir, when I return to my first
impressions, my mother's is the picture before me. She was a tall, pale,
and silent woman. She was still young at the period to which I am
referring. She was scarcely thirty, and yet you would have thought her
fifty. Her brow was silvered round with hair white as snow; her thin,
hollow cheeks, her sharp, clear profile--her lips ever closed together
with an expression of pain--gave to her features a strange character in
which pride and pain seemed to contend for the mastery. There was nothing
left of the elasticity of youth in that aged woman of thirty--nothing
but her tall, upright figure, her brilliant eyes, and her voice, which
was always as gentle and as sweet as a dream of childhood. She often
walked up and down for hours in this very room, with her head hanging
down, and I, an unthinking child, ran happily along by her side, never
aware that my mother was sad, never understanding the meaning of the deep
melancholy revealed by those furrows that traversed her fair brow. I knew
nothing of the past, to me the present was joy and happiness, and oh! the
future!--the dark, miserable future!--there was none! My only future was
to-morrow's play!"
Odile smiled bitterly and went on:--
"Sometimes I would happen, in my noisy play, to disturb my mother in her
silent walk; then she would stop, look down, and, seeing me at her feet,
would slowly bend, kiss me with an absent smile, and then again resume
her interrupted walk and her sad gait. Since then, sir, whenever I have
desired to search back in my memory for remembrances of my early days
that tall, pale woman has risen before me, the image of melancholy. There
she is," pointing to a picture on the wall--"there she is!--not such as
illness made her as my father supposes, but that fatal and terrible
secret. See!"
I turned round, and as my eye dwelt upon the portrait the lady pointed
to, I shuddered.
It was a long, pale, thin face, cold and rigid as death, and only luridly
lighted up by two dark, deep-set eyes, fixed, burning, and of a terrible
intensity.
There was a moment's silence.
"How much that woman must have suffered!" I said to myself with a pain
striking at my heart.
"I know not how my mother made that terrible discovery," added Odile,
"but she became aware of the mysterious attraction of the Black Pest and
their meetings in Hugh Lupus's tower; she knew it all--all! She never
suspected my father--ah no!--but she perished away by slow degrees under
this consuming influence! and I myself am dying."
I bowed my head into my hands and wept in silence.
"One night," she went on, "one night--I was only ten--and my mother, with
the remains of her superhuman energy, for she was near her end that
night, came to me when I lay asleep. It was in winter; a stony cold hand
caught me by the wrist. I looked up. Before me stood a tall woman; in one
hand she held a flaming torch, with the other she held me by the arm.
Her robe was sprinkled with snow. There was a convulsive movement in all
her limbs and her eyes were fired with a gloomy light through the long
locks of white hair which hung in disorder round her face. It was my
mother; and she said, 'Odile, my child, get up and dress! You must know
it all!' Then taking me to Hugh Lupus's tower she showed me the open
subterranean passage. 'Your father will come out that way,' she said,
pointing to the tower; 'he will come out with the she-wolf; don't be
frightened, he won't see you.' And presently my father, bearing his
funereal burden, came out with the old woman. My mother took me in her
arms and followed; she showed me the dismal scene on the Altenberg of
which you know. 'Look, my child,' she said; 'you must for I--am going to
die soon. You will have to keep that secret. You alone are to sit up
with your father,' she said impressively--'you alone. The honour of your
family depends upon you!' And so we returned. A fortnight after my mother
died, leaving me her will to accomplish and her example to follow. I have
scrupulously obeyed her injunctions as a sacred command, but oh, at what
a sacrifice! You have seen it all. I have been obliged to disobey my
father and to rend his heart. If I had married I should have brought a
stranger into the house and betrayed the secret of our race. I resisted.
No one in this castle knows of the somnambulism of my father, and but for
yesterday's crisis, which broke down my strength completely and prevented
me from sitting up with my father, I should still have been its sole
depositary. God has decreed otherwise, and has placed the honour and
reputation of my family in your keeping. I might demand of you, sir, a
solemn promise never to reveal what you have seen to-night. I should
have a right to do so."
"Madam," I said, rising, "I am ready."
"No, sir," she replied with much dignity, "I will not put such an affront
upon you. Oaths fail to bind base men, and honour alone is a sufficient
guarantee for the upright. You will keep that secret, sir, I know you
will keep it, because it is your duty to do so. But I expect more than
this of you, much more, and this is why I consider myself obliged to tell
you all!"
She rose slowly from her seat.
"Doctor Fritz," she resumed in a voice which made every nerve within me
quiver with deep emotion, "my strength is unequal to my burden; I bend
beneath it. I need a helper, a friend. Will you be that friend?"
"Madam," I replied, rising from my seat, "I gratefully accept your offer
of friendship. I cannot tell you how proud I am of your confidence; but
still, allow me to unite with it one condition."
"Pray speak, sir."
"I mean that I will accept that title of friend with all the duties and
obligations which it shall impose upon me."
"What duties do you mean?"
"There is a mystery overhanging your family; that mystery must be
discovered and solved at any cost. That Black Pest must be apprehended.
We must find out where she comes from, what she is, and what she wants!"
"Oh, but that is impossible!" she said with a movement of despair.
"Who can tell that, madam? Perhaps Divine Providence may have had a
design connected with me in sending Sperver to fetch me here."
"You are right, sir. God never acts without consummate wisdom. Do
whatever you think right. I give my approval in advance."
I raised to my lips the hand which she tremblingly placed in mine, and
went out full of admiration for this frail and feeble woman, who was,
nevertheless, so strong in the time of trial. Is anything grander than
duty nobly accomplished?