Mr. Ogden, deeply moved, went to his rooms.
She, the cause of it all, sat at the window with a book in her hands
without reading it. There was a look in the woman's face that amazed
him, a hard, cold look, that he had never seen there before while the
sunbeams fell on her bewitching features and on the green leaves still
in her hair.
"I want to leave the place at once," she said without looking at him.
"That poor man's face seems to haunt you, dear tender-hearted girlie,"
he replied with an outburst of tenderness, taking her in his arms and
kissing the handsome face he loved so dearly.
It was a fortunate thing that he was blissfully ignorant of her
relation to the dead man.
Gathering up courage--seeing that no suspicion had entered his
mind--she raised her beautiful eyes to his languidly.
"Yes, you are right, dear, I cannot stand such horrible things ... it
shocks me," she answered with her accustomed dissimulation in tone and
action.
Although she was a great adept in the art of hypocrisy and
dissimulation, she could not altogether hide the uneasiness which had
taken possession of her. A strange expression came into her eyes, an
expression he had never seen there. He looked at her and was puzzled.
What was it? What brought the change about? He could not tell.
She turned suddenly and looked out of the window with a stony face, in
order to hide, to subdue,--what? Did she conjure up a sinful vision
of her own life? No, she would not give in, but she was startled to
perceive something within her she did not reckon with: a voice wanted
to be heard, no matter how hard she tried to subdue it. It was the
voice of motherhood--that feeling seemed to be not quite dead in the
heart of the shameless woman. It was Nature's revenge! She had to
listen to the voice of Nature, or was it conscience, slowly awakening
to life?
Ah! Who would or could fathom the heart of an unscrupulous coquette?
"Had he any family?" she asked, indifferently, avoiding his inquisitive
gaze.
"Yes, I think he has a child, here is the address," he replied. "I
think it must be with someone he knew, poor unfortunate man. And
he gave me this in order to look up his orphan child." A mournful
compassion soon stole into his eyes.
"He could not speak any more, but the pitiful glance of the dying man's
face told me as much, and I am going to Dresden and see whether I can
do anything for his child," he added, looking deeply moved out of the
window. She gazed at him with puzzled eyes. "God! if he had an inkling
whose child that is!" she thought, remorsefully recoiling a step with
downcast eyes and tightened lips.
Finally summoning up courage enough, she said, hesitatingly, as if
fearing any comment:
"Yes, ... let us stop there on our way to Switzerland."
He wanted to stay until the funeral of the poor lecturer was over, but
she would not hear of it. She looked at him with frightened eyes when
he made the suggestion.
"I cannot stand such scenes," she replied with quivering lips.
"Well, well! Then we'll go, my sensitive little girlie. That accident
seemed to have upset your nervous system," he said with a smile,
kissing her tenderly and gazing fondly at her troubled face.
On the following morning they took their departure for Dresden, leaving
some money for the funeral expenses in the hands of the hotel keeper.
Instinctively he felt like doing something for the man he had robbed of
his happiness without knowing it.
But the unscrupulous coquette loved nobody but herself, knew it, felt
it, though without any remorse, that she had betrayed his deep devotion
and undying love so shamefully, fearing, in her deceitfulness, only one
thing--detection.
The following day a simple hearse, containing the corpse of the poor
humorist whose life ended so tragically, went up a lonely hill where
the grave diggers had just finished their gloomy work. The coffin was
lowered and the grave covered with mother earth. No mourners stood
around shedding tears.
The song of a mocking-bird rang from the downy cradle of myrtle
blossoms--as a funeral dirge--and a whip-poor-will answered from a
cedar in the neighboring woods.
When the night train going to Dresden, rushed by, the little white
cross indicating his resting place, looked like a bleached hand of a
skeleton shining out with a ghostly radiance across the silent, gloomy
plain.
Through the fleecy vapors floating around the lonely hill one with
clairvoyant eye may see at midnights the vacillating horde of the tiny
gnomes from the Traunstein with downcast torches repeating whisperingly
the sad tale, and pointing at the grave, in which the body of the dead
humorist, betrayed of his life's happiness, crumbles to dust.