Problematic Characters Part 67

Do you hear the nightingale sing? Listen! How sweet! how beautiful!

Oscar, you must not abandon Lizzie; she will cry till she blinds her beautiful eyes; and you must tell Harald not to worry poor Marie so much, else she'll go out into the black night. Good-by, dear child!--Yes, I'll burn everything; it is all safe in the chest. Mother Claus cannot read, but the right man will come at the right time!"

The head of the poor woman fell on her bosom. Albert thought she was dead. He went to the chest, raised the heavy top, and hastily searched the contents. There were women's dresses, which could not have belonged to Mother Claus--city-made dresses, such as young ladies wore twenty-five years ago! withered bouquets, faded ribbons, a few simple articles of jewelry; a string of red corals; a little gold cross on a black velvet ribbon. All this might be of very great interest to somebody else; but Albert pushed it impatiently aside. And still he went on searching and found not what he looked for. At last--there! at the very bottom of the chest, in a corner, and hid under a black silk dress, quite a parcel--letters, doc.u.ments--there they were! He slipped it into the pocket of his coat; he took with both arms what he had pulled out and stuffed it in again, pell-mell, as it came, closed the lid; and as he rose from his knees, was not that somebody coming? In an instant he was at the little window that looked upon the small garden behind the house. He opened it, he squeezed himself through the narrow aperture with a rapidity which would have done credit to an experienced housebreaker, crept on all fours through the currant-bushes, leaped the low fence, and disappeared amid the golden waves of a field of rye.

Just as Albert thus accomplished his retreat through the window, Oswald entered the room, breathless with haste. He feared he had come too late; he knelt down by the side of the old woman and chafed her withered, cold hands in his own.

And this touch seemed to restore the dying woman once more to life. She raised herself, and placing her hand on his head, she said, with a voice which sounded as if it came already from beyond the grave: "The Lord bless thee and preserve thee! The Lord give thee peace!"

"Amen," said Oswald.

The hands of the old woman fell gently on her knees. Oswald looked up.

The light of the setting sun fell through the low window upon her face; it looked as if it were spiritualized in the rosy light. But the rosy light vanished, and the gray evening looked upon the pale face of the dead.

Oswald closed her eyes. From the other side of the house came the ticking of the big clock, from the street the laughing and shouting of the children at play.--What does life know of death? what death of life? What does eternity know of either?

CHAPTER XI.

Next morning before breakfast Mr. Timm was gone. He had asked the baron to send him to the nearest town from which he could take post-horses.

The baron asked him hospitably why he was in such a hurry, and if he would not stay a few days to recover from his arduous labors? But Albert pretended to have received an important order--the postman had indeed brought him a letter--and the baron ordered the taciturn coachman to get ready his heavy bays. Mr. Timm bade all a brief farewell and drove off. n.o.body missed him--n.o.body, with the exception of the little Genevese. But she shed her tears in the retirement of her chamber, and the company saw nothing of her grief but her eyes red from weeping, which she intended to explain by a pretended headache, if anybody should inquire. But no one inquired.

They all had enough to do with themselves! All were fully occupied with what was nearest to their own hearts.

The death of the old woman was another blow to Oswald. Again he had lost one of the few beings in whom he was interested. It seemed as if his troubled mind was never to have any peace--as if the last bright light was to fade on his sky, and deep night was to surround him on all sides. He had seen Mother Claus but rarely, and yet it had always been under such peculiar circ.u.mstances as to make in each case a deep and lasting impression on his mind; he felt as if he had lost an old relative, whose tender affections he had rewarded with indifference and ingrat.i.tude. When he was last at her hut with Albert, he had determined not to lose sight again of the old woman, to ask her if he could help her, to inquire if anything could be done for her. She had thought of him in her last hour, while he had not had a minute for her in all these days! She had wished to bless him before she died--what had he ever done to deserve such a blessing?--It was of little use now that he provided for her funeral, that he and Bruno accompanied her to her last resting-place when they carried the simple coffin on a farm wagon to the graveyard at Fashwitz. It was of no use that he wrote to Grunwald, ordering a small marble tablet, so that her grave might not be too soon obliterated. But he thought how she would have thanked him during her lifetime for the smallest part of all the trouble he took for her now that she was dead!

Was it because he had not deserved it, that the blessing was not fulfilled? The peace which she had implored for him with the last breath of her lips would not come to his heart. Like a desperate man he struggled with the maddening pa.s.sion which had overwhelmed him of a sudden like a fierce hurricane, but every day convinced him but more and more of his inability to resist. He spent daily several hours in the company of the beautiful girl; she met him with her kindly smile on her proud lips as soon as the bright summer morning had ended the short night, which yet to him seemed so long! At table he sat opposite to her; her lessons by his side, and a hundred other occasions, inevitable in so small a family at a country place, brought him again and again in contact with the lovely one. He himself called his pa.s.sion not love, but friends.h.i.+p, deep interest--he tried to persuade himself that he would have felt the same friends.h.i.+p, the same interest, if his relations to Melitta had remained unchanged,--if accident had never revealed to him Melitta's image in a new light Oswald would have been the first to discover that it spoke neither of prudence nor of loyalty to make deceitful accident the judge of the weal or woe of a woman he loved so dearly, and that all these boastful reasonings were nothing more than cunning sophisms of a wild pa.s.sion; he would have discovered this in any one else; but we lack only too frequently that prudence and loyalty in our own affairs which we always have ready for others, and to think and talk wisely and to act foolishly are, it is well known, different things, which still can very well go hand in hand.

It is true that an impa.s.sioned heart could not very well resist being touched by so much beauty, grace, and mind combined in one person. All who came in contact with Helen felt the charm, the wonderful charm, she possessed; it seemed almost impossible not to take at once part for or against her with enthusiasm, so that even in the servants' hall lively scenes occurred, in which her attractions were discussed. The taciturn coachman would growl out that all was not gold that glitters, and the good old cook would reply that the angels of course never came to visit bad and envious men; then followed an angry and unprofitable discussion about bad men in general and in particular, which led to strange and sharp sayings on both sides, while the master and his family were handled without gloves, and much was said down stairs that would have struck horror into the hearts of the company up stairs. Thus they were pretty well agreed in those lower regions that Baron Felix had not come to Castle Grenwitz for amus.e.m.e.nt only, and his valet hinted that some people could say a good deal about that, if discretion was not the first duty of a good servant. He only desired to add, that his master was apt to carry out whatever he undertook, and that, in his opinion, there was not a young lady in this world who could resist his master for any length of time--an a.s.sertion which called forth most violent opposition on the part of the ladies present.

What these people discovered, Oswald's eye, sharpened a hundred-fold by love, could not overlook. He saw daily how the baron made every effort to win his fair cousin's love, how he brought into play all the skill he had acquired in a thousand intrigues on the smooth floor of brilliant salons in the capital, all the cleverness with which Nature had lavishly endowed him, and all the advantages he enjoyed as a near relative. He could not fail to see that the baroness sustained these efforts with wise discretion in every useful way, seconding Felix as indefatigably as ably. He would say: No! or remain silent, when Bruno, after dinner or during a walk, would tell him, with angry face, of some new impudence of "that ape Felix," but he knew very well that the boy had seen or heard right, and his only consolation was that Helen's pride would never consent to a union with a man so totally unworthy of her hand.

As for Miss Helen, she went her quiet way, apparently looking neither to the right nor the left, only she had become still more reserved in her manner, and more sparing of her smiles. She also felt perfectly well that she would have to stand alone in the struggle which was impending; that she would appeal in vain to the heart of a cold, selfish mother, the weak mind of an old father, or the courtesy of a frivolous, reckless man like Felix, and that she would have to rely on no one but herself. But this consciousness, which would have overwhelmed any other girl of Helen's age, only served to rouse and to inflame the courage of this high-hearted creature, in whom the whole power of the family seemed to be concentrated, only in a n.o.bler and purer form. The reconciliation which had taken place between her and her mother had only been apparent. Two persons are never more strongly opposed to each other than when they aim at different ends, and yet are equally well endowed with strength of will and powers of endurance.

There was no permanent union possible between the baroness, who knew and pursued only worldly purposes, and her daughter, who followed an ideal which might have been exaggerated, but was always lofty and pure.

Helen spoke freely of this in the letters, which she wrote more frequently now than formerly, to her dearest and most intimate friend, Miss Mary Burton. "Dearest Mary," she said in one of them, "how often have you accused your fate, which loaded you with riches but robbed you of all--parents, brothers and sisters, and even cousins--all those friends of both s.e.xes, which nature herself gives us for our way through life! But, believe me, dear girl, there is a sadder fate than yours. The melancholy you feel when you think of your loneliness in the world has something sweet about it. How often have you spoken to me of your brother Harry, whom you lost in the fall vigor of early youth, and of your sister Hetty, who died a mere bud. You told me then that they were not and could never be dead for you, because they lived brighter and fairer in your memory. You said that the shades of the departed were everywhere hovering around you, and that you felt far happier in their society than among the cold, selfish men of this world. Oh, surely life is not the first of earthly gifts, but love is. To live without love is useless; love without life can still be sublime. Your relatives are dead, but they live in you; my relatives live, but they are dead for me. It is a sad word, darling Mary, but I will not blot it out again, for it is true; and we have pledged each other to conceal nothing, even though the confession be ever so painful. Yes, they are dead for me, my relatives, and although I would give half of my life to call them back to life, good wishes can do nothing here. Who lives for us? Surely only those in whose hearts we can always find an asylum, to protect us against every grief that oppresses us and against every doubt that distresses us--those who wish only our happiness, and do not find it in the fulfilment of their own wishes, in the gratification of their own desires. And yet, this is the case with my relatives. Can I open my heart to them? Must I not always fear to offend them if I speak what I think? Do they care for my wishes? Do they not rather distress me with their plans and suggestions, which make the blood curdle in my veins? To be sure, my dear old papa--he would not abandon me if matters came to the worst; but, great Heavens, is it not bad enough to have to fear a worst? Ah, Mary, I cannot tell you how strange, how painful even the spirit that reigns in this house is to me; how I long to be back at school, where, if the outer world was closed to us, a fairer and a richer world was open to us in our dreams, and especially in our cordial friends.h.i.+p! Here I have no one whom I could admit into this inner world, no one but a boy, who, of course, cannot understand me, and a man whom I could love if he were my brother, but from whom I am parted by an impa.s.sable gulf. You know of whom I speak. I will not conceal from you that of late I have become more deeply interested in this man than I should ever have thought possible--a confession which may challenge your scorn, but which I owe to you, notwithstanding, from the sacred nature of our covenant. He stands alone in the world like yourself; his mother he has never known; his father died years ago, and he never had brother or sister. He is quite young yet, but great hearts live fast in a little while, and he must have seen and suffered much.

There is a shadow of melancholy on his brow, and in his large, dark blue eyes, which is irresistibly touching to me; at times his lips quiver with pain, so that I would give anything if I could go up to him and say: Tell me what pains you, perhaps I can help you, and if I cannot do that, I can at least sympathize with you. You know, dear Mary, that I am a thoroughbred aristocrat, and that I have an innate antipathy to all that is common and plebeian. We have both of us grown up in the conviction that the lower cla.s.ses lack not merely the n.o.bility of birth, but also the n.o.bility of thought, and that we cannot count, in them, upon an appreciation of what is best and highest in the world. I must tell you now that I have changed my views in this respect somewhat since I have come back to Grenwitz; that I have at least found how this rule also has its exceptions. Stein is such an exception. I never yet heard a word from his lips that would betray the plebeian, but, on the contrary, many that were spoken from my soul, and that found a loud echo in my heart. He speaks with more music in his voice than I ever heard before, so that I often try for hours afterwards to recall to my mind the manner and modulation with which he said one or the other thing. There is an indescribable charm for me in his sweet, melodious voice. I always felt as if men were speaking from the heart, and I could say, after a few words: This man has a good heart, and that man has a bad heart. And with Stein this proves to be correct. I have seen many proofs of his good heart. Thus, there died a few days ago an immensely old woman in the village, who was once upon a time housekeeper at the chateau, and drew a little pension from papa. n.o.body took any notice of her except Stein, and he took care of her burial, and accompanied, together with Bruno, her remains to the grave-yard.

They have blamed him for that at the house here, and I had to hear very heartless remarks about it; especially from a certain person, who ought to thank G.o.d if she ever thinks of a kind act, much less does one. But I will not honor this person by saying anything more about her. I have determined that she shall henceforth no longer exist for me, and hence I will not even speak of her any more...."

This letter, in which Miss Helen spoke so unreservedly about the persons by whom she was surrounded, never was answered, for it never reached its destination.

CHAPTER XII.

It was in the afternoon. The old baron was napping in the sitting-room.

He sat in his large rocking-chair; the newspaper he had been reading had fallen from his feeble, withered hand. He looked very much worsted, like a really old man who had not many years to live, and whose life might be very suddenly ended by a trifling attack. Anna Maria, no doubt, thought so as she sat opposite to him in her accustomed seat, looking at him long and attentively, apparently lost in deep thought.

Now she rose and spread a thin handkerchief over the sleeper's face.

Then she looked at the clock on the mantel-piece. It was nearly four, the hour at which, according to the unchanging rules of the house, coffee was served--in the garden, if the weather permitted it. The baroness was on the point of rousing her husband, but she reconsidered, went through the open door into the garden, and asked the servant who was carrying the coffee if Baron Felix had been called already?--Not yet, ma'am! Then go up stairs and tell him I beg he will come at once to see me, and--wait! tell mademoiselle she need not come to help to coffee; I'll do it myself; she had better stay in the linen-room.--And, what was it? Oh yes! You need not tell the others yet that coffee is ready!

The man went on his errands. Anna Maria pa.s.sed the garden-house and entered a long, perfectly shady avenue of beech-trees, which led from the lawn to a copse, in which an old ruined chapel was standing. She seemed to have forgotten entirely that she had sent for Felix, for she went on and on, her eyes fixed upon the ground, till she reached the end of the avenue and the little chapel.

It was a sweet, pleasantly melancholy place. Very old trees of gigantic size overhung it with their broad leafy branches, so that not a ray could pierce. The ground was covered with thick moss; long, luxuriant gra.s.s was growing between the broken stones; the crevices in the old walls were all covered with dark-green ivy, and here and there a tall blooming shrub rose from the ruins. Upon the weather-beaten stone cross in the empty window sat a little bird and sang. That was the only sound heard far and near. It seemed only to make the stillness around more deeply felt.

A lover of solitude would have been delighted with the place. But the baroness hardly raised her eyes from the ground to look hastily around.

She had at all times little eye for the rays of the sun that came trembling through thick foliage, for dark shadows and other features in a beautiful landscape, and now her mind was preoccupied with very different thoughts. She sat down on a stone bench immediately under the empty window frame in which the little bird was singing, took a letter from her pocket and began to read it once more.

It was the letter which Helen had written that morning, in the belief that her mother's a.s.surance she would never inquire about her correspondence was to be relied on. Fully trusting in the sacredness of letters, she had given it to her maid, with orders to carry it to the kitchen, where the postman was refres.h.i.+ng himself with a cup of coffee.

The maid had met the baroness in one of the pa.s.sages, and the latter had asked her whose letter that was? Upon her answer that her mistress had given it to her, the baroness had taken it with the remark, that she would give it herself to the postman when her own letters were sent down.

Thus Helen's letter had fallen into her mother's hands. It was an accident--one of those accidents which evil spirits seem to bring about, for the very purpose of confusing doubting minds still further, and of leading them more surely away from the right path. Without this accident it would probably never have occurred to the baroness that she might thus find a way to her daughter's heart. But her plan of marrying Helen to Felix had become a fixed idea in her mind, as it happens often with selfish and self-willed characters. The state of her husband's health seemed to her--justly or unjustly--very dangerous; Malte had from his birth been very delicate, and the over-anxious tenderness of his parents had made him still more so; thus it appeared to her more than probable that Felix might ere long be master at Grenwitz, and she thought it therefore wise policy to bind him to her interests as much as she could. At first she had looked in this to Helen's advantage almost as much as to her own, and found it very convenient that her and her daughter's interest could be so pleasantly combined. Felix seemed to be made to become the son-in-law of an imperious mother-in-law. He was trifling, yielding, averse to business, and always disposed to let things go as they chose to go, if he had but money or credit enough.

The baroness did not remember that such men are the hardest to manage, because reckless frivolity and intense selfishness can very well go hand in hand, and that these men are ever ready to sacrifice all who oppose their selfish desires. She thought she had nothing to fear from Felix. He had won her whole heart, as far as she had any heart, by his courteous, accommodating manner, and his ever ready: As you like it, dear aunt--do you settle that, please, dear aunt!

All the greater was her concern about Helen. She could not conceal from herself that all her attempts to draw her daughter nearer to herself had so far been fruitless. Of course, she blamed only Helen's "childish disposition" and her "overwrought notions" for the failure, but that did not change the matter itself. And now she had to see, moreover, that Helen had evidently more confidence in her father than in herself, that she was more warmly attached to Bruno than to her brother Malte, and that she treated Oswald, and even Mr. Timm, more courteously than her cousin. Felix had laughed when the baroness told him what she had noticed; he had even said it was a good sign. The ruder the better!

was the ex-lieutenant's doctrine, which he accompanied with a gallant comparison between horses and girls strongly smacking of the guard-house. But the baroness had the habit of trusting her own eyes, and her own eyes confirmed daily the correctness of her observation. At last Felix also had begun to feel less sure of success. Emily's words on that night had pierced his self-complacency like a barbed arrow.

Jealousy has hawk's eyes. Emily knew that only the love of another could have produced such a change in Oswald, and that wonderful instinct which in women more than replaces the slow logic of men, had in an instant revealed to her that her rival could be no one else but the beautiful Helen. Felix, in his rash manner of trying to get rid of a troublesome thought, had at once communicated the matter to the baroness, and she had meditated on it till she had come to the conclusion that Emily's suggestion was too probable not to be thoroughly investigated.

Just then accident had placed Helen's letter in her hand. This letter, intended only for her daughter's most intimate friend, would probably furnish her the key to her daughter's heart, and confirm or destroy her suspicion. That, this key in her hand became a thief's tool--what did it matter? She must have certainty at any price. And has not a mother the right to know her daughter's secrets? And if this daughter, as she feared, was going astray on a dangerous path, was it not the mother's sacred duty to bring her back by any means in her power?

Thus the baroness had tried to quiet her conscience. Man never is in want of excuses for an act which he has determined to commit at all hazard.

And there she sat now on the stone bench by the old walls of the chapel, with the little bird merrily twittering above, and the letter, the unlucky letter, in her hand. She knew it almost by heart. The fruit from the tree of knowledge, which he had so wickedly stolen, was bitter, very bitter! She had never loved her daughter; now she hated her daughter. It was true then! Her worst suspicions were confirmed.

Black ingrat.i.tude the only return for all her kindness! Helen on the best terms with the two persons she hated most! Baron Grenwitz's only daughter in love with a hireling, a low-born person, who received wages and his board from her parents! For what meant, after all, those fine phrases about Oswald's goodness of heart, and the sympathy she felt for his secret sorrow? The baroness did not know much of the language of love; but she did know that indifference does not speak thus. It had come to this then! Helen wanted war! Well--war she should have. They would soon see who was the stronger--the mother or the daughter. Could she yield now? Let the disobedient child have her way? Sacrifice her long-cherished plans to a foolish girl's whims? No, and a thousand times, No!

But what was she to do? Try kindness once more, or drop the mask, and command where prayers had been of no avail? And above all, how much of the secret was she to tell Felix? Would his pride be roused if he saw how little Helen thought of him, how she despised him, in fact? Might he not draw back, and would not Helen then triumph after all?

Before the baroness could quite settle this point in her mind, she heard steps near by. She hastily folded up the letter and concealed it in the pocket of her dress.

It was Felix. He had found no one in the garden-house, and accidentally looking down the avenue, he had thought he saw the baroness at the other end.

"Ah! it is you," he said, as the baroness rose when he came near, "I really did not know if it was you. The coffee is waiting, but, like King Philip in the play, lonely and alone. Everybody seems to have slept too long, like myself."

"Sit down here, Felix," said the baroness; "the coffee can wait. We can talk here more at ease than over there."

"A charming secret place for a nice little rendezvous," replied Felix, laughing, and sitting down by the side of the baroness.

At that moment the little bird ceased to sing that had been sitting on the cross in the window, and flew into one of the trees. The pale face of a boy, framed in dark curls, showed itself for a moment in the opening, and looked down, but disappeared instantly at the sight of the two on the stone bench.

"You are still always ready for a joke, dear Felix," said the baroness.

"Still!" replied Felix, "what has happened that I should cry? I suppose you cannot forget what I told you the other night? Pshaw! I have long since recovered from the fright; it was a false alarm, you may believe me."

"I wish I could share your confidence, dear Felix; but I have my good reasons for differing with you on that point. I have observed Helen more carefully since then, and I cannot get rid of the idea that there is something in the suggestion."

"But, pardon me, dear aunt. You have a marvellous talent for seeing everything in dark colors. It was a childish notion of the little Breesen; she wanted to annoy me--_voila tout_. I cannot imagine that Helen would prefer a schoolmaster to myself. Why, it would be ridiculous, _horriblement_ ridiculous," said the ex-lieutenant, and looked with pleasure at his patent boots.