Tales from the German Volume I Part 20

'Brave youth!' cried Rank, embracing him with much emotion. 'In heaven's name fight. If you fall, I will revenge your death as a good second should.'

At this moment the clock of St. Katharine's tower struck ten, and directly afterwards Baumgardt's boat landed through the splas.h.i.+ng waves of the lake. In company with another officer he jumped ash.o.r.e, and gave a coldly polite greeting to those who had been waiting his arrival.

With silent activity the two a.s.sistants placed the barriers, and, thrusting their swords into the ground some distance apart, stretched a cord from one to the other.

'How many paces, general?' asked Rank, stepping midway of the cord.

'Twenty!' answered Baumgardt morosely.

'That is a great distance!' calmly remarked Arwed, and each measured twenty paces from the cord and marked the points.

'Here, Gyllenstierna!' cried Rank, and Arwed took his place, whilst Baumgardt stepped to the opposite point, which his second had marked.

Both stood eyeing each other with folded arms. The weapons were not yet placed in their hands, but the glances of hatred exchanged were more deadly than the bullets.

The seconds had loaded the pistols, and the combatants now received them from their hands. 'Let him prevail who has the right!' whispered Rank to Arwed, stepping aside.

'It is yet proper to ask,' said Baumgardt's second, 'whether this affair may not be arranged in some other way?'

'In no other possible way!' cried Arwed. 'In this the major general will certainly agree with me.'

'In no other way!' muttered the general. His second then left his side, and the two combatants began slowly advancing, and with each step mentally measuring the distance which divided them from each other.

They had advanced scarcely five steps, when with Baumgardt the fear of death prevailing, and with Arwed his eagerness for the fight conquering all prudence and discretion, they both fired almost at the same moment.

Arwed's ball struck Baumgardt's hat from his head, and his opponent's grazed Arwed's left arm. But the latter, throwing away the discharged pistol, and taking the loaded one in his right hand, cautiously advanced.

Baumgardt followed his example, and advanced with a pale face, blue lips and bristling hair. While Arwed was observing the alteration which extreme anxiety caused in the countenance of his adversary, the latter elevated his weapon and continued slowly to approach, with his eye intently fixed upon Arwed's breast. Then swelled Arwed's heart, and the thirst for blood which now sparkled in Baumgardt's eyes, reminded him of the fiendlike expression of his face on the morning of the execution of Goertz.

'Your time has come! Forward!' cried the youth, in the same words Baumgardt had used on that occasion, raising his arm at the same moment. With sudden terror Baumgardt fired and missed--whilst his arm, struck and shattered by Arwed's ball, fell helplessly by his side.

'My G.o.d!' cried his second, springing to his side, and supporting the fainting man.

'My arm is gone!' said Baumgardt, grating his teeth and sinking upon the gra.s.s over which his blood was streaming. 'I am an invalid for life. Why could not the b.o.o.by's bullet have struck my heart or head, and so have ended the matter at once!'

Arwed now approached his adversary with Rank, who had bound a handkerchief upon his bleeding arm.

'I am sorry, general,' said he, kindly, 'and my anger vanishes with your running blood. May this misfortune awaken in you a true and heartfelt repentance for what you have done. I am appeased,--make your peace with G.o.d!'

'What are you chattering there?' cried Rank indignantly, whilst Baumgardt scornfully rejected Arwed's proffered hand.

'Take my hand,' said Arwed; 'it is the hand of reconciliation. Imagine that it is offered to you by the innocent Goertz, whom your conduct led to the scaffold.'

'Did not I tell you,' cried Baumgardt to his second, 'that this senseless quarrel had a political origin? You will be a witness for me with her majesty.'

Overcome by pain, he fell back powerless.

'Your thoughtless words will cost you your head,' said Rank, hastily dragging the youth with him down to the sh.o.r.e.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Arwed was sitting in his quarters, and his regimental surgeon had just finished bandaging the wound in his arm, when old Brodin entered in great perplexity.

'His excellency, your father,' whispered he, 'desires to speak with you alone. He will be here directly.'

'It will not be a very pleasant interview,' sighed Arwed, motioning the surgeon to absent himself.

'You are not far out of the way,' said Brodin, after the surgeon had retired. 'His excellency is very angry with you. I have, therefore, hastened here before him to prepare you for his visit and to beg of you, as an old, true and zealous servant of your house--if the anger of the old gentleman should carry him too far, that you will still remember that he is your father, and listen to what he may please to say to you, not as a captain of the guards, but as a son.'

'I thank you for the warning, worthy friend, and will obey you,'

answered Arwed.

The door now opened, and with a flaming, red face, the old counsellor entered.

'The old tell-tale already here,' cried he, 'plotting with the lost son? I would be alone with the captain.'

Brodin made a submissive, exculpatory gesture, whereby he at the same time seemed to beg permission to remain--but the old man pointed angrily towards the door, and Brodin unwillingly retired.

'So, you have fought to-day with major general Baumgardt?' asked the father with a.s.sumed calmness.

'Yes,' answered the son, 'but without any important consequences. I am but slightly injured, and his life is also out of danger.'

'Right!' cried the father, with somewhat increasing vehemence. 'So the trifle of rendering a general, who is particularly valued by the queen, a cripple for life, is a mere ordinary affair.'

He walked two or three times up and down the room, and then opened a window and looked out. After a while he turned again towards Arwed.

'G.o.d is my witness,' cried he, shutting the window with great violence, 'G.o.d is my witness, that I have been forbearing as an angel, but your conduct would make an Epictetus furious. To challenge the major general just at the moment when the queen, by promotion and knighthood, had declared him her favorite--to shatter his arm, and then confidentially to tell him that it was on account of his arresting Goertz, to which arrest Ulrika is probably indebted for her crown! Would it indeed be possible, by the widest stretch of fancy, to imagine a proceeding more senseless and ruinous than yours?'

'The party spirit,' answered Arwed, 'which divides our country, early teaches every Swede to choose his side; and, in a land so disturbed by political storms, a peculiar disgrace seems to rest upon neutrality.

Blame me not then, my dear father, if I also have formed my principles; and be not angry because they are not exactly like yours. If you have nothing to pardon me for, except that, having once chosen my party, I have remained true to it in every emergency, that circ.u.mstance should, as I think, honor me in your eyes.'

'_Honor!_' cried the counsellor angrily. '_You_ dare to talk of honor, _you!_'

'What mean you by that? 'asked Arwed with vehemence.

'Where were you on the evening of the king's funeral solemnities?'

thundered the father.

'With Georgina,' answered he, not without great astonishment at the question.

'The body of Goertz,' said the counsellor, with fierce energy, 'was on that very night stolen from the place of execution. You, perhaps, can tell how it happened.'

'I find it very natural,' answered Arwed, 'that those who loved the unhappy man, and are firmly convinced of the injustice of his condemnation, should, at least, have borne off his remains from the unworthy resting place in which he was left by the malice of his enemies.'

'And if,' proceeded the counsellor, in a slow, cutting tone, 'if a Swedish officer had commanded this nocturnal expedition, what fate do you think would await him under the present government?'

Arwed, by this question, perceiving with a secret shudder that his father knew all, remained silent.

'Dishonorable dismission!' sternly exclaimed the counsellor; 'and possibly, as an especial mercy, imprisonment for life!'