Hammer and Anvil Part 79

"It is not given to every one to submit so cheerfully to tyranny as you do, dear Fraulein."

"I am exhausted," said Fraulein Duff, pressing her palm against her brow. "All my evidences glide off from this serpent-smooth eccentric."

"Then let us break off this conversation; besides, it is full time I had started for Rossow."

I had arisen, and the governess also arose, swung the long train of her riding-habit boldly over her left arm, and said, leaning on my right:

"Richard, do not go to Rossow: evil will come of it: trust me; I have Ca.s.sandra's foreboding spirit."

"I am, though from other motives, little inclined to go," I replied; "but I am resolved to do my duty and keep the promise I made to the commerzienrath, whether he asked it with a good or an evil intention, and be the consequences what they may."

"'I like the Spaniard proud,'" replied Fraulein Duff with an enthusiastic look, "but it is not always the haughty one who brings home the bride; the crafty one often reaches the goal. 'The monarch's pampered minion seeks her hand--' do you not fear Arthur?"

"To fear, in such cases, one must either hope or wish: I am not aware that I have indulged in either feeling."

Fraulein Duff in sudden terror drew her arm from mine, stopped and exclaimed:

"Great heavens, what do I hear! How am I to understand you? O Roderick, by all our hopes of bliss hereafter I adjure you--do you not love her then? Do you really love Paula, as that insidious Arthur is ever whispering in her ear?"

I was spared the necessity of answering this very ticklish question, for at this moment William appeared, calling me, and saying that the Rossow carriage had been waiting for me half an hour, and that he had been looking for me everywhere.

"Good-by, Fraulein Duff," I said.

"And no answer? None?" cried the governess with a look of agonized expectation.

"This is my answer," I said, pointing to the carriage.

Ca.s.sandra possibly found that oracular speeches are sometimes too hard even for seeresses to unriddle, for as the carriage rolled out at the gate I looked back and saw her standing where I had left her, her eyes and hands raised to heaven, in the att.i.tude of the Praying Child.

CHAPTER XV.

But the deliverers of ambiguous oracles do not always find their avocation an exhilarating one, as I at once discovered while the light, elegant vehicle, drawn by two magnificent blood-horses, rolled over the excellent new road which led from Zehrendorf past Trantowitz to Rossow.

It was a glorious afternoon; here and there in the clear blue sky stood great white clouds, whose shadows agreeably diversified the otherwise rather monotonous landscape; larks were singing gaily over the broad fields of young grain waving in the soft west-wind, plovers flew over the great heath, trenched in various parts by turf-cuttings between the beech-woods of Trantow and the pine-forest of Rossow; and from the distance came unceasingly the call of the cuckoo. The whole landscape to its minutest details has remained imprinted on my memory, perhaps because the bright laughing picture was in so marked a contrast with my own gloomy and undecided feelings. The indiscreet question of the governess had lifted the veil from a secret of my heart, which I had hitherto carefully pa.s.sed with averted face. Only lifted a little, not removed. I had not the courage nor the strength to complete what I had begun, and as in such moments of confusion one usually catches at the first object that presents itself, in order to escape mere distraction, I now clutched the determination not to let my heart, though it should break in the effort, interpose a word in the affair I had undertaken.

In this mood I looked forward to the approaching interview with a calm that would have astonished myself had I reflected where and how I last met the prince, and under what singular circ.u.mstances our previous meetings had occurred. But I scarcely thought of this at all, or, if at all, only to shake off the thought and say to myself: I have wandered here into such a labyrinth, that one strange meeting more or less makes no difference. Only forward! have done with it! for it is no longer possible to turn back.

The pines of Rossow--a beautiful piece of woods of fine stately trees--had now closed around us; the road growing sandy, compelled the driver to go at a slower pace, and I sprang from the carriage and walked beside it with long strides, so that I soon left it behind.

The trees grew ever larger, the silence ever deeper, the mysterious forest-twilight dimmer, until suddenly I stepped from under the last trees and saw before me a well-proportioned small castle, gray with antiquity, with tall spires on the turrets, numerous balconies and other projections of various kinds, here and there thickly overgrown with ivy, standing in a clear s.p.a.ce surrounded by magnificent trees.

This was the hunting-lodge Rossow, the temporary residence of the young banished prince.

An old domestic with snow-white hair, who was sitting in the Gothic portal, now approached me, and after respectfully inquiring the object of my coming, and telling me that the prince had been expecting me some time, led me through a small dark hall, singularly decorated with old armor and weapons of all kinds, up several stairs to a Gothic door, artistically ornamented with iron-work, which he threw open with a bow and the whispered words, "His Highness has given orders to admit you unannounced." I stepped into the room and stood before the young prince.

He was rising from a wide sofa upon which he had probably fallen asleep while waiting for me; at least the expression of his handsome, pale, refined face indicated confusion, and it was some moments before he appeared quite to comprehend the situation.

"Ah, yes," he said, at last; "Herr--excuse me, my memory for names is so very bad--Hartig? Oh, excuse me Hartwig--so it is! Now this is very kind of you to come; very kind indeed. I beg you will be seated. Do you smoke? There are cigars; help yourself. Very kind of you indeed!"

He had thrown himself back again in the corner of the sofa, and half closed his eyes as if he wished to go to sleep again. I took advantage of the opportunity to cast a hasty glance around the apartment.

It was a large antique room, not very high, panelled in dark oak, with a ceiling of oak, divided into compartments. Portraits, brown with age, hung around the whole wall, to the solitary wide Gothic window, through the small stained panes of which fell a dim and colored light. The furniture, which was very numerous, was in a correspondingly antique and venerable style: wide-backed chairs, cabinets and tables richly inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory; and on the mantelpiece, between elegant pitchers of beaten silver and goblets of cut-crystal, stood a large clock, artistically inlaid, and covered with elaborate and fantastic scroll-work, a master-piece of _rococo_.

Upon a great bear-skin rug before the fire-place lay a handsome long-haired wolf-hound, who at my entrance had raised his head a little and then laid it between his fore-paws again. The clock on the mantel ticked softly in the silence, a thrush twittered outside of the window, the footsteps of the old domestic resounded on the stone hall, and presently the young prince in the sofa corner opened his large weary eyes and said: "What were we speaking of just now?"

"We?" I asked, in some surprise.

"Ah, to be sure," said the prince, "we have not yet spoken of anything.

You must excuse me; but really it would be no marvel if I forgot how to speak altogether; for I have been sitting now two months already in this frightful den, like an owl that dreads the daylight. I sometimes look at my nails to see if they are not turning to talons. How wearisome it all is! But now we will proceed to business. Will you have the goodness to push the cigar-box over this way; and, if it is not too much trouble, touch the bell there to your left?"

I did as he requested, and the old servant entered with a bottle and two gla.s.ses.

"You need not wait," said the prince.

The old man placed the waiter between us on the table, and left the room.

"Will you fill your gla.s.s?" said the prince; "and mine too, if you will be so good--thank you. We shall need it in this dry business."

But despite this thorough preparation, he seemed to be in no hurry. He examined his nails as attentively as if he now really detected the first sproutings of the owl's talons, then suppressed a slight yawn and seemed to have the question as to what we had been talking about, once more on his lips, but luckily bethought himself, and said, while playing with a large signet on his finger:

"I have always wished to see you sometime at my house; you must know that I take an extraordinary interest in you."

"Indeed?" I said.

"Yes indeed, an extraordinary interest," the prince repeated. "I have retained you in my memory from the time of our first meeting, which, to tell you the truth, is but rarely the case with me. But you seemed to me, and still seem, to be an original, and I take a peculiar interest in originals."

I bowed slightly, and took advantage of the pause to remark, "If it is agreeable to you to hear from me what I think, from careful examination of the chalk-quarry----"

"You see, originals are very scarce," went on the young prince, as if I had not spoken,--"incredibly scarce. No one knows that better than one of our cla.s.s, who are chased up and down through the world from our youth up. Everlasting sameness: the same stereotyped faces, the same stereotyped manners, the same stereotyped phrases. I could scarcely name more than two or three persons who have produced upon me the impression that I was talking with real human beings and not with puppets. One of these is, as I said, yourself; another is an old decrepit dervish whom I lighted on, if my memory serves me, in Jerusalem, and who told me that after a search of a hundred and four years he had found the philosopher's stone, and that the thing was not worth finding; and the other was perhaps poor Constance von Zehren."

I moved uneasily in my chair, and began again--"The chalk-quarry, about which your Highness----"

"She it was that brought about our acquaintance," went on the prince, who again could not have heard me; "so it is but natural that my memory reverts to her at this moment when I have the pleasure of conversing with you so agreeably. She was a peculiar, a strangely organized being, whose nature has been to me, up to this moment, a perfect riddle, and probably will ever remain so. A mixture of apparently absolute contradictions: proud, without self-respect; bold, even foolhardy, and yet, if I may so express myself, of a catlike timidity; romantic, yet calculating--in a word, I have never been able to comprehend how such characteristics could exist together in one and the same soul. You, as you have yourself known her, will admit the correctness of my judgment; and perhaps will also agree with me in the opinion that one should reflect long before one holds a man who has had the fortune--or misfortune--to be drawn into too close an intimacy with a person of so strange a nature--an intimacy which I may well call perilous--one should reflect long, I say, before holding that man responsible for all the consequences which this perilous intimacy may entail."

The young man was still leaning back in the sofa-corner, playing with his ring, a picture of ennui and indifference. I was in the most painful position imaginable, and inly cursed the chance which had brought the indolent man to speak upon this theme of all others. Or was it then a chance? I fancied that I perceived in the tone with which he spoke the last words, some signs of internal emotion; but I could not be sure of it, and I was about to make a third and decisive attempt to bring the conversation to business matters, when the prince began again in a more animated tone:

"It is not my fault that all happened as it did. I have, it may be, one or two things upon my conscience which I had rather not have there when I sit here all alone, and for very weariness cannot even sleep; but in that affair I am really not the most culpable party. I was very young when I first saw her; she was far the older of the two, if not in years, at least in experience and worldly prudence. How she came by it I know not--with women anyhow we rarely know how they come by it--and she had it all, as I said, in a high degree. It was no slight achievement to blind me to the ruin which lay plainly enough before my eyes; the anger of the prince, my father, upon whom I am altogether dependent, the certainty that I was throwing away the hand of a n.o.ble and amiable lady who had been chosen for me: it was no trifling achievement, I say, and yet she succeeded in bringing me to it. And yet, upon my word as a n.o.bleman, I would never have abandoned her, if I had not heard a circ.u.mstance connected with Fraulein von Zehren--or at least having reference to her--something of which she was altogether innocent--absolutely and entirely innocent--which I cannot further explain because it is not my secret, but which was of such a nature that from the moment I learned it all thoughts, whether of a lawful or illicit connection between us, became for me at once and forever impossible. Strange things come to pa.s.s in life: things which at first appall us like hideous spectres, but which one gradually becomes accustomed to and learns to endure. Do you not think so?"

The prince seemed to be half in slumber again as he put this question; but somehow I could not entirely believe in this half-sleep; on the contrary the impression grew stronger upon my mind that my distinguished host was playing with very laudable skill, a well concerted part. So his confidential communications only made me distrustful, and with a reserve that was otherwise foreign to my nature, I determined to wait and see whither this singular discourse was really tending. The prince probably expected to produce a different effect upon me, for he presently added, with eyelids half closed.

"You once felt an interest in the lady of whom we are speaking, did you not?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Your answer sounds as if you no longer felt that interest."

"Not to my knowledge," I replied.