Next morning brought inclement autumn weather. Fog and drizzling rain
obscured the landscape, and bushes and flowers bore evidences of the
first nipping frost.
All the Ettersberg servants had their heads together, and were asking
each other what could possibly have happened. That something had
happened was as clear as day.
But the afternoon before, when the visitors from Brunneck had been at
the castle, perfect union and cheerfulness had reigned; but shortly
afterwards, from the moment the young master had left his mother's
apartments, there had been disturbance throughout the house.
Since then the Count had remained invisible, shut up in his own room.
The Countess was very ill, so her maid reported; but she would see no
one, and had even forbidden that a doctor should be sent for.
Baron Heideck had made two attempts that morning to gain access to his
nephew. To him, as to all others, admittance was refused. Family
scenes being things quite unfamiliar to this household, imagination
had the greater scope, and supplied various explanations, none of
which, however, approached the truth.
It was almost noon. Heideck had made a third essay to reach the young
Count, but once more without avail. Old Everard, dismayed and
helpless, stood in the presence of the Baron, who was saying, with
great determination of tone:
'I must see my nephew, cost what it may. It is impossible that he can
be deaf to all this calling and knocking. Something must have happened
to him.'
'I heard the Count pacing incessantly up and down all night,' timidly
remarked Everard. 'He has only been quiet for the last half-hour.'
'No matter,' declared Heideck. 'He may have had a fresh hemorrhage
from his wound and have fainted. I have no alternative but to force
open the door.'
'There may, perhaps, be another way,' said Everard hesitatingly. 'The
small tapestried door, which leads from the Count's dressing-room to
his bedroom, is generally kept unlocked. If we----'
'Why did you not tell me this before?' Heideck interrupted him, with
some heat. 'Why did I not hear of this the first thing this morning?
Show me the door at once.'
The old servant suffered the rebuke in silence. He did not believe in
the fainting or the hemorrhage, the fear of which was to serve as a
pretext for a forcible intrusion. He had distinctly heard his young
master's footsteps all the night through, but had felt that the latter
desired to be left absolutely alone. Now, however, no choice was left
him; he must point out the door of which he had spoken. It proved to
be unlocked, as he had supposed.
Heideck motioned to the old man to remain outside, and went in alone
to his nephew. The bedchamber was empty, the bed untouched. With rapid
steps, the Baron passed on into the adjoining sitting-room, and an
exclamation of relief escaped his lips as he caught sight of Edmund.
For the last few minutes he had feared the worst.
'Edmund, it is I,' he said, in a low voice.
No answer came. The young Count seemed to have noticed neither his
words nor his approach. He was lying on the sofa with his face buried
in the cushions, having, as it seemed, thus thrown himself down from
sheer fatigue. His attitude betrayed that utter exhaustion which comes
as a reaction after any great tension of mind or body.
'How could you cause us so much anxiety?' said Heideck reproachfully.
'Three times to-day have I knocked at your door in vain, and I have
been compelled almost to force an entrance here.'
Again there was no reply. Edmund remained quite motionless. His uncle
went nearer, and bent over him.
'Give me a word of answer, Edmund. You rushed away like a madman
yesterday. There was no holding you back. I trust that you have grown
calmer by now, and that you can at least listen to what I have to say.
I have just come from your mother----'
The mention of this name seemed at length to produce some effect.
Edmund shivered slightly, and sat up.
At sight of his countenance the Baron started back, scared and
shocked.
'For God's sake, what ails you? How can you allow yourself to be so
utterly overcome?'
The young man's features were indeed so changed as to be hardly
recognisable. The misfortune which had befallen him seemed at one dire
stroke to have taken from him all strength and courage. The dimmed
look of his eyes and the complete prostration evident in voice and
bearing told this plainly, as he replied:
'What is there for me yet to hear?'
'You know no details. Have you really no questions to put to me?'
'None.'
Heideck glanced uneasily at his nephew. A passionate outburst of
feeling would have pleased him better than this numb listlessness. He
sat down by Edmund and took his hand.
The young man offered no resistance; he seemed hardly to know what was
going on about him.
'Yesterday I did all in my power to conceal the truth from you,'
pursued the Baron; 'for I myself am perhaps not blameless in this
unhappy business. I interfered in a somewhat arbitrary manner with the
lives of two human beings, and the fault, if fault it were, has been
cruelly avenged. My intentions were indeed of the best. I knew that
the young officer to whom my sister was attached, and even secretly
engaged, was as poor as herself. He had no fortune to offer her, he
could not have married for years, and I had too sincere an affection
for Constance to allow her to lose the bloom of her youth, to pine
away in anxiety and sadness. When I separated her from her first love,
and persuaded her to accept the hand of Count Ettersberg, I did so in
the firm persuasion that her attachment had been a mere transient
romance, a passing fancy, which marriage would cure at once and
effectually. Could I have guessed what deep root the feeling had
taken, I would not have interfered. It was only about a year later,
when I heard that the regiment had been moved and quartered in the
garrison-town nearest to Ettersberg, that I began to divine a danger,
and my next visit here transformed the suspicion into a certainty.
When the two met, their old love sprang up with fresh intensity, and
developed into a passion which bore down all barriers before it. When
I discovered this, when I stepped between them and forcibly recalled
them to a sense of their duty, it ... it was, I grieve to say, too
late!'
He paused, and seemed to expect an answer. Edmund withdrew his hand
from his uncle's grasp, and stood up.
'Go on,' he said, in a half-stifled voice.
'I have nothing more to add. With this separation all was over. I told
you yesterday that the portrait was the portrait of a dead man. He
fell the very next year, being one of the first victims of the war
which then broke out. My sister never saw him again. Now you know the
chain of events, and how it all happened; now try to regain composure.
I can understand that it has been a terrible blow to you. You must
accept it as a hard decree of Fate.'
'Yes, a hard decree,' repeated Edmund. 'You see that I succumb to it.'
'A man must not so easily succumb to life's first trouble,' said
Heideck earnestly. 'You will learn to bear that which must be borne.
But now exert yourself, and put from you this useless brooding over
the unalterable, the irreparable. Will you not come with me to your
mother?'
The young Count negatived the proposal with a hasty gesture.
'No, uncle. Do not ask that of me, not that!'
'Edmund, be reasonable. You cannot remain shut up in your rooms for
ever.'
'I shall leave them to-day. In a couple of hours I shall start on a
journey.'
'On a journey? Where do you mean to go?'
'To town, to Oswald.'
'To Oswald!' cried Heideck, bounding from his seat, and staring at his
nephew as though he had not heard aright. 'Are you out of your
senses?'
'Did you imagine that I should be the accomplice of this fraud?' burst
forth Edmund, his unnatural calm suddenly merging into a fierce blaze
of anger. 'Did you really think it possible that I should be silent
and continue to play the master here, when the rightful heir is driven
out, leading a life of privation and almost of poverty? If you two can
do it, I cannot. How I am to bear the terrible existence before me,
whether I shall be able to bear it at all, I know not. But this I do
know. I must go to Oswald, must tell him that he has been cheated,
defrauded, that Ettersberg is his of right. He shall hear it all;
then ... then it will matter little what becomes of me.'
Heideck had listened in mortal alarm. Whatever he may have feared, for
this turn of affairs he certainly was not prepared. Were Edmund to
learn that his cousin knew, or at least divined, the secret, an
explanation between the two could no longer be prevented, and so the
whole edifice would crash to pieces.
The uncle understood all the incalculable consequences of such a
catastrophe better than his impetuous nephew, and he was resolved to
prevent it at any price.
'You forget that you are not the only person concerned in this,' he
said emphatically. 'Have you not thought whom the confession you
propose making would disgrace and dishonour?'
Edmund recoiled, and the feverish glow which had overspread his
features gave way to a livid pallor.
'Oswald has always been your mother's enemy,' continued Heideck. 'He
has always hated her, and she has never deceived herself as to his
sentiments. Will you really go to him--to him of all people, with a
tale which will ruin her? What a triumph for him to see at length the
woman he hates in the dust before him, to hear her own son----'
'Uncle, no more,' broke in Edmund, with a wild cry. 'I cannot bear
it.'
'I should not have supposed you could hesitate a moment between your
mother and Oswald,' said the Baron, frowning. 'But here there is
really no alternative. You must yield to necessity.'
Edmund had thrown himself on to a chair, and hidden his face in his
hands. A low groan escaped his overcharged breast.
'Do you think it has been a light thing for me to keep silence, and to
aid and abet that which you call fraud?' asked his uncle, after a
short pause. 'But I repeat, you have here no choice. The entailed
estates are not transferable; they cannot be alienated from you. You
must either remain Master of Ettersberg, or proclaim your secret to
the world--in which case the honour of two houses, of Heideck as of
Ettersberg, will be irretrievably lost. There is no other issue. I set
this distinctly before my sister in years gone by, when she was on the
point of owning all to her husband; now again I must call upon you to
recognise it. You must be silent. If Oswald's future is sacrificed
through our silence, we cannot help that. The family honour stands
higher than his right.'
He spoke with iron firmness and composure, but this only lent more
power to his words, and Edmund felt the truth that was in them. A
desperate struggle was going on in the young man's breast, a struggle
between his sense of justice and the stern necessity which was so
forcibly demonstrated to him.
Oswald's query recurred to his mind. 'Suppose silence was imposed on
you for the sake of the family honour?'
He was, indeed, far from attributing to his cousin's words any deeper
significance, or from divining his knowledge of the truth. That
conversation had come about most naturally. The young Count remembered
in this hour how he had been fired with indignation at the bare notion
that anyone could impute to his mother interested motives. How proudly
and disdainfully had he declared that no shadow, no slur should attach
itself to his life, that he must ever bear himself before the world
with a clear conscience and unsullied brow! Two days ago he had held
that language, and now....
Baron Heideck lost not a moment in pursuing his advantage. He had
recourse to the last and most effectual weapon in his armoury.
'Now come with me to your mother,' he said, in a milder tone. 'You do
not know how cruelly she has suffered since yesterday evening. She is
waiting in terrible suspense for news of you, for a word from your
lips. Come.'
Edmund passively allowed himself to be raised from his seat and led a
few steps towards the door. There he halted suddenly.
'I cannot,' he said.
Heideck, who had thrown open the door, which had been locked on the
inside, paid no attention to this protest, but endeavoured to draw his
nephew from the room. The latter now resisted energetically.
'I cannot see my mother. Do not press me, uncle; do not try
compulsion, or there will be a repetition of last night's scene.'
He freed himself from Heideck's grasp, and pulled the bell. Everard
came in at once.
'My horse,' commanded his master. 'Have him saddled immediately.'
'Is this your reply to all that I have been saying to you? Has it all
been in vain?' cried Heideck, in despair, when the man had withdrawn.
'Can you really still intend to take that journey?'
'No, I shall remain; but I must be out in the open air, or I shall
stifle. Let me go, uncle.'
'First give me your word that you will do nothing rash, nothing
desperate. In your present state, you are capable of any madness. What
am I to say to your mother?'
'What you will. I have no other intention than to ride about the
country for a couple of hours. Perhaps I shall be better then.'
With these words Edmund hurried away, his uncle making no further
effort to stop him. He saw that neither persuasion nor soothing words
of comfort could avail at present. Perhaps it would be well to let the
storm spend itself.
Hour after hour passed. Noon came, then gradually dusk drew on, and
still the young Count did not appear. At the castle the anxiety
produced by his protracted absence grew with every minute. Baron
Heideck reproached himself most bitterly for having allowed his nephew
to leave him in so excited a frame of mind, but he was obliged to
conceal his fears. He had to be strong, to think and act for his
sister, whose brain seemed well-nigh to reel beneath the weight of
dread and suspense. She wandered from room to room, from window to
window, rejecting all her brother's attempts at encouragement with a
mute, despairing gesture. Better than he, than anyone, she knew her
son, and knew therefore what was to be feared.
'It really is useless for us to send messengers, Constance,' said
Heideck, as he stood near her at the window. 'We have not even an
approximate idea of the road Edmund took, and it only causes the
servants to shake their heads and gossip more persistently. The young
madman must have tired himself out by this time. Now that it is
growing dark he is sure to turn homewards.'
'If he has not started on his journey after all,' whispered the
Countess, whose eyes never once swerved from the avenue leading up to
the castle.
'No,' replied Heideck decidedly. 'I made it evident to him that his
confession would involve another, and who that other would be; we have
nothing to fear on that score. He has certainly not gone to Oswald,
but----'
He forebore to finish his speech, out of consideration to the
Countess, but a great dread had seized upon him. Might not his nephew,
by some despairing act, have sought a solution which would be worse,
more cruel even than the threatened avowal to Oswald?
Another troubled pause ensued, another interval of painful silence,
such as had frequently occurred that afternoon. Suddenly the Countess
started up with a cry, and bent forward, far out of the window.
Heideck, following her example, could discern nothing, but the
mother's eye had already recognised the figure of her son, in spite of
mist and gathering darkness. There he was--still distant, however--at
the farther end of the avenue. The Countess's self-control now utterly
forsook her. She did not remember that a plea of illness had been
advanced for her to the servants: did not stay to consider how Edmund
might receive her. She only wanted to see him; to have him with her
again, and she rushed to meet him, so swiftly and impetuously that her
brother could hardly follow her.
Outside in the vestibule they had a few minutes to wait, for the young
Count, who had set off from home at a furious gallop, was returning at
a snail's pace. The horse, fairly bathed in sweat, trembled in every
limb; at length it halted before the door. The animal was evidently
completely spent, and its rider seemed to be in the same condition.
He, who usually would swing himself so lightly from the saddle,
dismounted now slowly, almost laboriously, and it cost him a visible
effort to ascend the few steps leading up to the entrance-hall.
The Countess stood on the very spot where some months before she had
received her son on his return from his foreign travels. Then, radiant
with the happiness of meeting her, he had rushed impetuously into her
arms. Today he did not even notice that his mother was there. His
clothes were saturated with rain, his damp hair clung to his brow, and
he moved slowly forward, never looking round, but walking straight in
towards the staircase.
'Edmund!'
It was a faint, trembling cry. Edmund turned, and beheld his mother
standing close before him. She said not another word, but in her eyes
he could read the misery, the anguish of the last few hours. And as
she stretched forth her arms to him, he did not recoil, but stooped
down to her. His lips met her forehead with a damp and icy touch, and
in a whisper, audible to her alone, he said:
'Be at peace, mother. I will try and bear it for your sake.'