Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

CHAPTER XXIII.

But I scarcely had quitted my house when I reflected that after what had happened, it was scarcely possible that the prince could still be in the theatre, and I turned my steps towards his palace. It was about nine o'clock; the evening was cold and raw, though we were at the beginning of March; the snow was blowing about in the wind and eddying around corners; pedestrians were hurrying along with pulled-up collars and bent heads; and I could not help remembering the evening a year before, when I saw the unhappy girl in the yellow light of the lamps at the door of the palace, which I now reached all out of breath. For the revenge which had then blazed in her dark eyes and breathed from her mouth, the revenge to which she had in vain endeavored to entice me, for this sweet, this terrible revenge she had found the right man at last.

I was possessed with the feeling that all this had to come so; that a destiny long-appointed, which neither I nor any one could baffle, had now reached its accomplishment. I asked myself--What brings me here? What do I mean to do? I could find no answer to this question; not even when I stood in the ante-chamber and besought the old servant, who had been called, to lead me at once to his master.

"I can admit no one," the old man replied.

He seemed greatly agitated, his voice trembled as he spoke, and his withered hand, which he raised as if to keep me off, trembled visibly.

At this moment the door leading to the room in which the prince had received me in the afternoon opened, and Count Schlachtensee came out and passed us with the same fixed look I had observed on him in the theatre. Evidently it was not pretence; he really did not see me. So what I had feared, was now rushing down. I could not restrain myself longer, and regardless of the old servant, rushed through the door through which the count had come, traversed a second large ante-chamber towards the inner room, through the open door of which I saw the prince sitting at a writing table.

"This to Herr Hartwig at once!" he said, holding out to me a letter in his left hand, while he leaned his head on his right.

"I am he," I said, taking the letter, and holding his hand firmly in mine.

His hand was cold, and the face which he now turned to me was pale as death; only on the right cheek glowed a crimson spot, as if branded there.

"You here?" he asked, in surprise. "That is very well; now I can tell you what is in the letter, which I will ask you to take care of. It is a written memorandum of our agreement to-day, with the addition of a request to the prince, my father, to carry out this agreement, whatever happens."

I still held his hand, and endeavored in vain to speak a word. If I had needed any explanation of the irresistible sympathy with which this man inspired me, I had it now in my very hands. And this man must be the sacrifice of a base piece of treachery! This man, who through all temptations had preserved so pure his native generosity and kindness of heart, must be entangled in the snare which his rash youthful foot had touched years before!

This, or something like this, was what I said to him when I found words at last, and I added that I could not endure the thought, and eagerly asked if there were no possible way--none--to escape from the toils?

"Sit down," said the prince, bringing me to the fireplace in which a comfortable fire was burning, offering me an easy chair and taking another himself "Did I not say that you were an original? For none but a man who has preserved to his thirtieth year a considerable share of the innocent philosophy of his childhood, could hit upon the idea of asking a prince of Prora if it is not still possible to carry patiently through his whole life an insult offered him before a score of witnesses."

He said this in a very friendly manner, and with an attempt to smile, but his pale lips quivered and the spot on his cheek glowed a deeper red.

"I am no child," I said; "but it may well be that a man who has lived so solitary a life as mine, is an incompetent judge of the customs and principles that rule the great world. I only know that in my heart a voice cries: this must not be! Must it be then? Are those laws which I confess I do not understand, as inflexible as fate?"

"Yes; it must be," the prince replied. "I also have considered it--not for my own sake, but for the sake of those to whom I would gladly have been something--but it must be."

"And your rank----?" I began.

"Does not excuse me," he answered, with a smile like that of a teacher who dissipates the crude and futile objections of a pupil, "I am not a sovereign prince, though my ancestors were sovereigns. I am a nobleman like other noblemen, and subject to the same laws. My antagonist is noble too: the house of Sommer-Brachenfeld, of which he comes by direct descent, is an ancient race, nearly as ancient as my own."

"But a notorious profligate, a miserable adventurer like this man--has he not dispossessed himself of the right of being challenged to the field by a prince Prora?"

"I fancy not," the prince replied, still with the same good-natured smile. "The man is an adventurer, it is true; but I saw in Ireland a fellow who descended from the legitimate kings of the green isle of Erin, and who was a keeper of hogs; and in Paris, in a cafè chantant, I saw the genuine scion of an ancient ducal house, who was singing indecent songs to the guitar before an audience of men in blouses and women of the streets. Now an actor at a Royal Theatre is quite a respectable person. And again, have I been no profligate in my time? And can I know what would have become of me if the family council had really cut me off from the succession, and thrust me out into the world with an indemnity in money? However large the sum might have been, it would not have lasted long, and then--no, no, I have no right on this ground, not even an excuse, to avoid a duel, supposing that I looked for an excuse; but I look for none."

We both remained silent. Without, the winter wind swept through the streets and howled and whistled around the palace, like a hungry wolf around the fold; and here in the room the light beamed so soft from the lamps upon the marble tables, over the splendid furniture, on the hearth the fire glowed and sparkled so cosily, and surrounded by all the splendor, and illuminated by the soft light, at the fire upon his own hearth, sat the master of this house, who did not even look for an excuse to avoid a duel with an adventurer who had nothing at risk but his own bare life.

"I look for none," said the prince again. "Indeed I believe that though there were the most indisputable justification of such a course, I should decline to avail myself of it. I will say nothing of the fact that it is impossible for me to live in the consciousness that such an insult is unavenged--as impossible as for me to live by picking pockets--but I have a feeling which I cannot shake off that this is a doom which has fallen upon me, against which all resistance is unavailing."

He raised his eyes as he said this, and his look fell upon the portrait of the young cavalier in the fantastic costume, which he had told me represented his father, and which hung at some distance from us, brilliantly illuminated by the light of a large lamp.

"Altogether unavailing," he repeated, with a deep sigh, turning his face from the portrait to the flame on the hearth, upon which his eyes remained vacantly fixed, while his pale lips moved as if uttering words which I could fancy I heard, though they were unspoken: "altogether unavailing!"

This was the same fatal presentiment that had laid its spell upon me from the first. The events that had just now taken place, had been prepared long, long ago; they had stood already written in the stars that glittered on that autumn night when the young prince stole through the park of Zehrendorf to his love. I sat there, my fevered brow resting on my hand, and thought of that night, and how I was summoned to guard her who did not wish to be guarded, who even then was planning and weaving the web of treachery, and was even then a wanton, who, if I could believe what the good Hans told me, had been in this case the betrayer and not the betrayed, and who yet like a vengeful fury pursued the man who was guilty of no wrong towards her, except that of being her first lover, if he was the first.

I must have spoken aloud some part of the thoughts that were passing through my mind while the prince was walking up and down the room, and at last stopped beside me and laid his hand upon my shoulder:

"True heart," he said, "how true you are, and how you increase the debt which I have never yet paid you, and which I would so gladly pay before it is too late. Perhaps it will be something if I do for you what I would do for none other: if I try to justify myself to you for the part I have played in this unfortunate affair. Perhaps too I owe it to her; and I would fain settle all my debts: I would wish that one man lived who will know, if Prince Carl von Prora falls, how and why it was that he died."

He checked me with a gesture as I was about to speak, and proceeded, his soft beautiful eyes fixed upon the fire which was now dying out on the hearth:

"You think that Constance never loved, neither me nor any other; that it was not in her nature to love, and that therefore no one could be a traitor to her. In this way you attempt to justify me; but you are wrong. Constance really loved me, and still I did not betray her. Whether I loved her or not is another question, which I cannot affirm--which I would not for much be able to affirm. I was very young when I first saw her at that unlucky watering-place; scarcely more than a boy; and I may have loved her as boys love, romantically, passionately, and yet not deeply. I know I behaved like a madman when my father came and said that I could never marry the daughter of a professional gamester and notorious smuggler, especially when the girl was not even the legitimate child of this dishonored father. But this you know: I told you all this; and this was all the prince then told me. But this was not all that he might and should have told me. And his telling me but half the truth while he concealed that which was of most importance, out of what I must call false shame of appearing to his son in the light of an evil example, and out of prudery to the world which had long known him as a pious man and protector of the church, this is the evil seed from which has sprung this disaster for me and for himself.

"I cannot say that the prince's warning was altogether fruitless, nor can I say that I was convinced by it. I was a boy, a wild spoiled boy, accustomed to having my own will because it was my will--my own will often against my will. So was it here. The prince, convinced of my obedience, committed the imprudence of sending me, accompanied by my tutor, to Rossow, to hunt there, to recover my injured health, and to pay court to the fair Countess Griebenow, who was allotted to me by common consent of both families. How easy it is for a youth with money enough in his pocket, to bribe his servants, I need not say. I spent the morning at Griebenow, and the evening--you know where. But you do not know, and probably would not believe upon any other authority, that my courtship was carried on in very nearly the same style and tone in both places. I repeat it, I was young, very young, and youthful modesty and a certain chivalrous sense of honor, which is perhaps native to me, always restrained me, even in the secrecy of Constance's apartment. Whether it was female modesty, or calculation--probably both; for I have rarely found women in which both were not present together--she always knew how to keep me in limits, and scarcely at rare intervals allowed me to kiss her hand. She maintained this rigor so firmly that I was more than once convinced she loved some other; and you can conceive whom I believed this other to be. Thus the play went on which had very nearly been brought to a sudden end by our meeting in the wood, and on the very day following I succeeded in realizing a long-concerted scheme, and carrying off my beloved. I had made her no promises, but she asked none, and no doubt thought all would come right if she played her part well. And she played it just as before; and while we were looked upon by all the world as a pair of unlawful lovers, and were pursued in all directions by my father's letters and couriers, I had received no favor from her beyond the privilege of kissing her hand.

"I had made my preparations so skilfully that I escaped all the prince's researches, though he moved heaven and earth to find the fugitives. He would have started in pursuit himself, no doubt, only his alarm at what had happened, brought on a violent attack of his old gout. And well had he cause to be alarmed."

The prince suddenly arose from his chair, and walked once or twice across the room, stopping again before the portrait of his father, at which he looked with a darkened countenance. He then resumed his seat, and proceeded:

"I had already got as far as Munich, when the old servant whom you have seen overtook us. He was the bearer of a letter in cipher, in which there was important information from various members of my family, and a few lines in my father's own hand, upon reading which I had laughed aloud. They ran: 'I adjure you by all that you hold sacred, to part from her at once if you do not wish to load yourself with a horrible crime: Constance von Zehren is your sister.'"

"Great heavens!" I cried.

"As I said," continued the prince, "I laughed; laughed madly at the thought, and then felt a shudder run over my whole body and seem to settle in my heart.

"The letter referred me to the old servant for further particulars, until the prince was in a condition to write me more fully. He, who from his youth had been attached to the prince's person, and had accompanied him upon all his travels, was better able than any other to explain the matter. He had been with the prince in Paris at the time when Herr von Zehren arrived there in his wild flight from Spain with his beloved. The two gentlemen had been very intimate friends, and at our court the two handsome stately young men went by the names of Orestes and Pylades. But it seems that this friendship was much shaken when the prince married my mother, whom Herr von Zehren had also courted. Whether the prince could never forgive his friend this rivalry, or whether Herr von Zehren, who was a man of fierce and uncontrolled passions, gave the prince afterwards any cause of offence--I do not know: but it appears that the prince was not only fascinated by the charms of the young Spanish lady, who tormented by her conscience, and perhaps as weak-minded as she was beautiful, bestowed upon her lover's friend a confidence which he abused, and perhaps also a love which he only did not refuse.

"Was the prince the father of the child which passed for Herr von Zehren's? It could not be certainly known; and the doubts which the prince himself had on this point might never have been removed; for when a few years later the unfortunate woman came to Rossow, where the prince was then staying, and threw herself, with dishevelled hair at his feet, crying that he was the father of her child, imploring him to protect her and her child from their pursuer, and to tell her the way to Spain--at this time she was a mere maniac. But there were other confirmatory circumstances. An old female servant--the same horrible old woman who was with Constance later, and whom you probably knew--declared that her young mistress had told her the secret from the first. She may have lied; but nature rarely deceives, and the prince found in the child, which he contrived to see privately, a likeness of which perhaps a trace may still be discovered in that picture yonder."

The prince pointed with trembling hand to the portrait of his father; but he only told me what I had discovered for myself while he was telling me this frightful story. He must have read in my looks what I did not venture to express, for he continued, fixing his beautiful melancholy eyes upon me:

"You see it too, do you not? We easily discover the truth when it is pointed out to us; and I perceived it while the old woman was making her terrible confession, and I blessed a merciful heaven that had saved me from an awful crime. But how to free myself from this wretched entanglement? Perhaps I should have disobeyed the prince's orders and told Constance the whole truth; but I cannot too often repeat that I was very young, and not in a condition to judge what might be all the consequences of my hasty resolution. So I thought I should be managing with great adroitness if I could continue to inspire Constance with hate of me, or at least aversion, for the love that I now regarded with horror. The means of attaining this end she had herself supplied me in her arts of keeping me at a distance, in which I now was disposed to see more than mere calculation. I returned her caprice with caprice, her obstinacy with obstinacy, her coldness with coldness; I played my game so well that I could not fail to win. What she suffered, I never heard her say; but I saw it in her face which grew paler day by day, in her eyes in which there often seemed to be the fire of madness.

"At last came the catastrophe. After a violent scene, which I had provoked, in Naples, whither we had come on our travels--I do not now know why or how--I parted from her, in the firm conviction that she would employ the ample means I had left at her disposal, either in returning, or in the flight with which she had often threatened me. But this would have been insufficient for the revenge which she conceived such treachery as mine deserved. She, whom I had held to be the proudest of the proud, who refused to belong to the Prince of Prora unless he made her his wife--she cast herself into the arms of the first comer, a wretched coxcomb whose acquaintance we had made by the way. I shudder when I think what this first step must have cost the unhappy girl; but I shudder still more when I think how little all subsequent steps have cost her."

He sighed deeply, and his sigh awakened a terrible echo in my own breast. I sprang up and took a stride towards the door.

"Where are you going?" asked the prince.

I grasped my temples with both hands; my brain seemed on fire.

"I do not know," I said, "I only know that this duel must not take place."

The prince smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"It is a queer business, altogether," he said.

"And is there no remedy--none?" I cried.

"Not that I know of," the prince answered with the same kindly melancholy smile. "The young man would have to declare that he was out of his senses. And that would not help; for any one who declares his own insanity is not insane--ah, there you are, dear Edmund!"

I had not seen that Count Schlachtensee had entered the room behind me. The prince advanced to meet him, and took his hand: the count said "I come----" and then checked himself and fixed a surprised look on me whom he now observed for the first time.

"I must now take leave of you," said the prince. "I thank you heartily for your visit--heartily," and he grasped my hand firmly in his own which was small and delicate as a woman's. "Farewell!"

I was at the door when he followed me and gave me his hand again. "Farewell," he said once more, and added in a low tone, "perhaps for ever!"

I stood in the street, with the snow driving into my face. I turned back to look at the palace, and saw upon the lowered curtain the shadows of two men who were pacing up and down the room. They were the prince and his cousin; and I knew what they were conversing about, and that there was not a moment to be lost. I called a hackney-coach that was passing, and ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible to the lodging of the actor Von Sommer, who went by the name of Lenz.