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.
"It is not that alone, though that is bad enough," sobbed Anna Maria;
"but we also are threatened with a similar exposure," and under the
pressure of a moment, yielding to the natural impulse of all helpless
sufferers to cling to others at any hazard, she told Helen in a few
words all about Oswald's claims on her fortune, and that if these
claims should be legally established she and her daughter alike would
be beggars.
Helen had listened to her in breathless excitement. Her color came and
went continually, her eyes were fixed on her mother, her hand held her
mother's hands with a firm grasp.
"Beggars! you say? Better so and a clear conscience than in abundance
and fainting with anxiety! Come, mamma, I am not afraid of poverty! You
have often told me how poor you were before you were married to papa.
Why should I be better off? I do not see that being rich has made you
happy, or papa; he told me so in his last hour. I have seen it with my
own eyes how much happier people are who have nothing but their
affection, who rely on nothing but their own strength. I have strength;
I can and will work for you, if it must be so. But now let us go away
from here. You are sick and weary; your hand is icy cold, and your
forehead is burning; stay, do not get up. I will pack your things; you
need not trouble yourself; I shall be down in five minutes."
"No," said the baroness, "let me do that. Mary can help me. You can do
something else for me. We cannot well leave without writing a few words
of farewell to the princess, as she is too unwell to see us, and we are
in such a hurry. Sit down and write a few lines, kindly and politely,
but neither more nor less than what is indispensable."
"I will do so," said Helen, sitting down at her escritoire, while her
mother went into the adjoining room.
Helen had just taken up her pen when she heard a noise behind her which
made her look up. In the middle of the room stood Oswald, deadly pale,
his large eyes, brilliant with fever, fixed upon her. Helen was so
terrified that she could not speak nor move. She thought for a moment
it was an apparition.
Oswald seemed to guess so.
"It is really I!" he said. "Pardon me for my abrupt appearance. I asked
for the baroness; they showed me in here."
"I will call my mother," said Helen, rising.
"I pray, stay," said Oswald; "I pray you! I have only two words to say.
I would rather say them to you than to the baroness."
There was something so solemn in Oswald's manner and tone of voice that
Helen had not the heart to refuse his request.
"Will you sit down?" she said, sinking herself into a chair and
pointing at another chair near her.
Oswald sat down.
"I do not know, Miss Helen, if your mother has spoken to you of certain
intrigues by which she has been troubled of late, and which originate
mainly with a certain Mr. Timm?"
"I have just this morning heard of it for the first time."
"That was my own fate. And this is what brings me here. I cannot bear
the thought; I believe I could not die quietly if I thought that you
believed me capable of employing such vile means against you. Will you
please tell the baroness so?"
"I will."
"And tell her also, I pray, and believe yourself, how bitterly I regret
that you have been troubled with such a matter."
"It was nothing but an invention of Mr. Timm!"
"No, Miss Helen!" said Oswald, with a sorrowful smile. "I presume it is
more than that. I am only too much afraid it is the real truth, and
that is the second reason why you see me here."
"You surely do not imagine we would refuse to acknowledge legitimate
claims against us?"
"That case will never arise. I have no desire to make such claims. I
should never have done so, under any circumstances; and least of all
now."
He cast a look around him. The splendor of the apartment reminded him
forcibly in whose house he was.
"Least of all now!" he repeated. "Here are the papers which prove this
most unfortunate of all stories. I desire the baroness to take them and
to keep them, so as to be secure at all times against that man's
machinations."
He placed the documents and papers which Timm had brought him a few
hours before upon Helen's escritoire, and bowed to take leave.
"One moment, sir!" said Helen, rising likewise. "Do you imagine my
mother will accept such a gift? Who has given you the right to think so
little of us?"
"I think, Miss Helen, your pride misleads you in this instance. There
is evidently no one whom this whole matter concerns except myself, and
I desire to be relieved of an unpleasant suspicion. It was hardly
necessary to remind me that a few hundred thousand dollars, more or
less, mattered little to the mother of the owner of Grenwitz, and to
the betrothed of Prince Waldenberg."
"Circumstances ought not to affect our duties," replied the young girl,
rising to her full height and curving her lips contemptuously; "and you
need not believe that I am so indifferent to your claims because, I am
proud of our wealth and our rank. We are at this very moment on the
point of leaving for Grenwitz, where my brother is lying dangerously
ill; and there, on my escritoire, lies the beginning of a letter in
which the princess will be told that I shall never be her son's wife."
Helen's dark eyes were shining brightly; the hot blood gave greater
depth to the red on her cheeks. Oswald had never seen her so beautiful,
so marvellously beautiful. And this at the moment when he had already
in his heart bid farewell to life, which had no longer any charms for
him. Just now this glorious beauty, this highest beau-ideal of his
wildest dreams, must present herself to him, not at an inapproachable
distance, but within reach attainable to his bold desires--to his firm
will, perhaps! Why did she tell him that she would never marry the
prince? And why did she tell it in such a defiant tone, if she did not
mean to humble him--the weak, hesitating, fickle man--by the strength
of her will, by the promptness with which she abandoned all this
splendor, merely in order to remain true to herself?
These thoughts passed swiftly through Oswald's mind, which worked all
the faster as he had been so long sleepless and feverish. He knew that
she would never have told him all this if she had not loved him at some
time or other; if she did not perhaps still love him; and yet he knew
with absolute certainty that they were separated from each other
irretrievably by all that had happened. There was therefore no
bitterness, but deep sadness in his voice, as he fixed his eyes
immoveably upon the heavenly beauty before him and said, slowly:
"Let us not sadden one another still more by violent, bitter words! Who
knows whether we shall ever speak to each other again? I feel like a
dying man, and what I am going to say I do not say for myself, but from
an earnest desire to state the truth. Helen, I have loved you from the
hour when I saw you first in the park at Grenwitz! I have never
forgotten that moment. I know that you also would have loved me if I
had but been true to myself; you might have become my own. But when I
forsook myself you also forsook me, and now there is an abyss between
us over which there is no bridge. And what seemed to be about to bring
us together--the discovery of this morning--only parts us forever. I
feel it clearly. You will never be disposed to accept a gift, as you
call it; and I would rather burn my right hand than stretch it out
after the inheritance of a man who made my mother the most wretched of
women. There is no peace possible between us, even if everything else
were as it ought to be. And now, Helen, before we part--probably
forever--one more request; give me your hand across that gulf which
parts us, as a token that I am forgiven!"
Helen laid her hand in Oswald's.
Thus they stood and looked deep into each other's eyes; and as they so
looked they saw all the golden summer mornings in the past at Grenwitz
under the whispering trees, and all the purple-glowing evenings in the
green beech woods near the sea-shore--and then they saw nothing more,
for a close veil of tears hid the enchanting images.
"Farewell, Helen!"
"Farewell, Oswald!"
"Forever!"
"Forever!"
Oswald did not take the beloved one in his arms; a feeling of holy
reverence kept him back. He felt that the time for repentance which was
granted to him was too short, and swearing new vows which he felt no
strength to keep was not making amends for so many broken ones.
He let the hand go which he had held in his own, and--the next moment
Helen was alone.
She was still standing so, her eyes fixed on the door through which
Oswald had disappeared, when the baroness came back to the room.
"It is high time, Helen," she said; "the carriage is waiting. Are you
ready?"
"Yes."
"What papers are those on the escritoire?"
"Did he not take them again?"
"Who?"
"Oswald."
"Has he been here? What did he want?"
"He came to say good-by. Take those papers, mother. He brought them to
you."
"Helen, you look pale; and you have been crying! What does that mean?
Do you love that man? Must I lose my last child then?"
"Be calm, mamma. I shall not leave you in our misfortune. There is the
letter to the princess. One moment, mother."
She sat down and wrote in great haste a few lines.
"Well, that is done! I am free once more! Come, mamma; I will show you
that I have still strength and courage enough for life. Come!"
And she drew the baroness, who willingly yielded herself up to her
daughter's superior energy, with her out of the room.
A minute later the two ladies had left Waldenberg House, and half an
hour afterwards the train carried them away from the city.