CHAPTER XIV.
Mr. Schmenckel walked slowly down the Linden to William street. He had crossed his arms behind and pressed his hat low down on his brow. People made way for him, for he stared fixedly at the pavement, and continually murmured unintelligible words through his teeth. But Mr. Schmenckel was neither drunk nor mad; he was only a little excited, and repeated the lesson which Berger had taught him. It was a hard task; but Mr. Schmenckel felt that he was only doing his duty if he broke up the plot into which he had been entrapped by the cunning of Mr. Timm. How fortunate that he had revealed it all to the professor in his great anxiety! How that man talked! Why, he had frightened him out of his wits! Schmenckel had always said that the professor was a man of very special gifts. And that the Czika turned out to be a baron's daughter, that was no wonder to Director Schmenckel, of Vienna. She had such wonderful eyes, that girl, and he had always treated her well; it was not so strange, therefore, that the baron should have offered old Caspar Schmenckel a place as steward on one of his estates. No; Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, need not try to obtain money by foul means. Caspar Schmenckel could hold his head high again and----
"Why on earth, old man, are you coming only now?" said suddenly a very sharp voice near him. "You ought to have done with your visit by this time!"
It was Mr. Timm who had uttered these angry words. He had been patrolling up and down William street, in the neighborhood of the Waldenberg mansion, in order to hear the result of Oswald's interview with the Baroness Grenwitz. He thought Director Schmenckel was by this time on his way to the Dismal Hole, where they had appointed to meet in case they should miss each other in the street. Timm had had his reasons for sending Schmenckel an hour sooner than Oswald to the house. If Oswald's interview with the baroness was to be successful, the baroness must first have read a certain letter; and in order to make the letter effective, Schmenckel must first have had a conference with the princess. In Mr. Timm's exquisite plans each measure fitted into the other as in the works of a watch. Mr. Timm had, therefore, good reasons for being very indignant at Mr. Schmenckel's dereliction.
"It is enough to drive one mad," he continued, in his irritation. "I cannot leave you alone for a moment but you commit a stupid blunder."
"Oh! not so rude, my friend!" replied Mr. Schmenckel, feeling in his virtuous purposes quite able to cope with the serpent-wisdom of his accomplice, "or I'll become personal too!"
Mr. Timm saw that he had gone too far.
"Well, well!" he said, gently; "between friends no offence ought to be taken. Only make haste now to go in. All may come out right yet. You have seen the count this morning?"
"No!" growled Mr. Schmenckel.
"But why on earth haven't you seen him?" exclaimed Timm, whose indignation was roused once more.
"Because I did not choose!" said Schmenckel, defiantly. "Because I do not want to have anything more to do with you anyway!"
"Ah!" said Timm; "you would like to raise the treasure by yourself? I have burnt my fingers to draw the chestnuts out of the fire for you, eh? No, my dear sir, we are not quite such fools. He who wants to be paid must work."
"I do not want a farthing of that wretched money!" cried Schmenckel. "I am going to tell the princess that I am an honest fellow, and that she need not trouble herself any further."
"Are you piping in that way?" asked Timm. "You mean to betray me a little, do you? Have a care, man; you might have to pay dear for the fun!"
"I shall do what I like," said Schmenckel, assuming a very determined air, and walking off with long strides.
"You shall not enter that house!" cried Timm, and seized Schmenckel by the arm.
Schmenckel's reply to this challenge was a blow, which hurled Mr. Timm very unpleasantly across the sidewalk against the wall. The next moment the great portal had closed behind Mr. Schmenckel.
The little altercation with Mr. Timm had put him in a kind of heroic ecstasy well suited for the interview he was about to have. Thus it happened that he was not abashed by the gorgeous livery of the servants, nor by the splendor of the rooms through which he was led. But his courage failed him and his heart sank when the servant stopped at a door and whispered: "Her grace is in there; go in without knocking; she expects you." Mr. Schmenckel passed his hand through his thick hair, cleared his voice, held his hat firmly under his left arm, and entered cautiously.
A rosy twilight received him, and in the rosy twilight he noticed two women, one of whom was seated in an arm-chair near the bright fire that was burning there in spite of the warm weather, while the other stood a little sideways behind the chair. Both of them examined him as he approached with eager curiosity. His reception caused him to shorten his steps more and more till he suddenly came to a stop half way between the door and the fire-place.
"Come nearer, my friend," said the lady who was standing behind the chair.
Mr. Schmenckel advanced a few inches and came again to a stop, quite determined this time not to approach nearer to those formidable eyes.
"You are the man who wrote to Count Malikowsky day before yesterday?" asked the lady behind the chair.
"Yes, your grace." Mr. Schmenckel felt as if these words, which he no doubt had uttered himself, had been spoken by some one else at the other end of the large apartment. This was by no means calculated to bring back the heroic frame of mind which the rosy twilight and the bright eyes had so seriously damaged. He blushed all over, and cleared his voice in order to convince himself that it was really he himself who was speaking to the ladies.
"Your name is Schmenckel?" asked the lady behind the chair.
"Yes, your grace."
"And you were in St. Petersburg twenty-four years ago?"
"Yes, your grace."
"And you visited at Letbus House?"
"Yes, your grace."
"Do you recognize me?"
Mr. Schmenckel fixed his eyes, which had been resting upon everything in the room except the two ladies on the speaker, and said, after a short reflection,
"I should think so; although I should not like to swear to it. If it was not such a very long time since, I should say you were the Nadeska, the chambermaid of the princess, who was all the time bringing me notes and rose bouquets into the Black Bear."
Nadeska bent over her mistress and whispered a few words into her ear, to which the latter replied in the same tone. Then Nadeska left the room.
"Wont you sit down, Mr. Schmenckel?" said the princess, as soon as they were alone.
Mr. Schmenckel seated himself on the outer edge of an arm-chair.
"Do you recognize me also?" asked the lady.
Mr. Schmenckel bowed, placing his hand on his heart.
"Why did you not come to me directly?" the princess continued in a tone of gentle reproach. "Why did you take the count into your confidence? Have I ever been ungenerous towards you. Was it my fault if our last meeting ended as it did?"
Mr. Schmenckel was about to reply, but the princess continued.
"If I had known that you were still living, and where you were living, I would have provided for you liberally; and I am still willing to do so. But one condition I must make: you must have nothing to do with the count; and, above all things, you must never dare come near the prince. If you will comply with these conditions you may ask what you choose, and if Alexandrina Letbus is able to do it it shall be done!"
The princess extended imploringly her thin, transparent hand; her black eyes filled with tears; the rosy twilight gave a spiritual beauty to her pale but still beautiful features. Mr. Schmenckel had a susceptible heart in his bosom, and the humility of the great lady moved him deeply.
"Let me say a word now, too, your grace," he said "I am not the scoundrel you make me out. I should never have dreamt, your grace, of writing a letter to the count, if I had not been persuaded to do so by an awfully bad man. Timm is his name. I never knew at all that Caspar Schmenckel, of Vienna, had such a great lord for his son. But that man Timm said to me: No harm in beating about the bush; no harm in that! Then he wrote the letter, and carried it himself to the count. The count came the same evening to the Dismal Hole to see me, and told me he was very glad if I could make life a little hard to you, Mrs. Princess. But he said I must not say a word to the prince, or there would be an end to the fun. And then, says he, you ask too much; a fourth of it is enough. And he told me to talk it over with your grace and then he would pay me the money this forenoon at his hotel. Now, your grace, you may believe it or not, as you choose, but Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, is an honest fellow, and don't like to do any harm to anybody, least of all to a beautiful lady who was once upon a time very kind to poor Caspar. And when your grace sent for me, and let me know that you wanted to see me yourself, I said: Caspar, says I, go to the princess and tell her so and so, and she must not trouble herself about it any more; Caspar Schmenckel will never come near her in all his life. And as for the money, I tell your grace, not a penny do I want to touch of it, not if it were to turn into pure gold on the spot. And so, your grace--princess, good-by to you! And if we don't see each other again you must remain well, and don't you trouble yourself any more about Caspar Schmenckel; he'll never do you any harm. I kiss your hand, your grace!"
With these words he rose and made his best bow.
The princess was very much touched.
"Good fellow," she said, with trembling voice.
Her eyes dwelt with pleasure upon the herculean proportions of the man who was the father of her son. The extraordinary resemblance between them, in figure as well as in face, filled her with mournful satisfaction. She thought of the days when this man, a lion in strength and agility, had conquered not her heart but her imagination. But at the same moment a sudden fear overcame her lest her son should find his father here--lest her son with his pride and his passionate temper should ever discover that this juggler, this rope-dancer, was the father of Prince Waldenberg.
"You must go!" she said, hurriedly. "Here,"--she took a superb ring from her finger, in which the diamonds shone in all the colors of the rainbow as they caught the light of the fire--"here; no words, take it! I wore it long, long ago, even when Nadeska first brought you to me; take it as a keepsake from Alexandrina Letbus! But now go, go!"
She touched the silver bell. Nadeska entered.
"Show him out! Mind that no one sees you!"
Nadeska took Mr. Schmenckel, who would have liked to say something, but was too confused and embarrassed to find words, and led him through a secret door which led near the fire-place into a narrow passage, and then through a private staircase into the courtyard.
The princess sank exhausted back into the cushions of her easy-chair, and hid her eyes behind her hand. She did not notice that a heavy curtain on the right hand from the fire-place, which had been moving several times during her conversation with Mr. Schmenckel, now opened and admitted the prince. She only heard him when he was close by her. She opened her eyes, and at the same moment she uttered a piercing shriek--his unexpected appearance and a single glance at his pale, disturbed face told her that he had heard all.
"Mercy, Raimund! Mercy!" she cried, raising her folded hands in agony towards him.
Raimund's broad chest was heaving as if it were struggling with an overwhelming burden, and his voice sounded like a hoarse death-rattle, as he now said, pointing with the finger at the door through which Schmenckel had left,
"Was that man who has just left you my father?"
"Mercy, Raimund! Mercy! Are you going to kill your mother?"
"Better you had never borne me than this!"
The powerful man trembled as if violent fever were shaking him; a groan broke from his breast which resounded fearfully through the gorgeous apartment.
"By all the saints, Raimund, hear me, I beseech you! I will tell you all!"
"I need not hear any more. I know too much already. The count called me a bastard! I thought he was mad! He called me by my right name."
He put his hand to his side--he had laid aside his sword in the ante-room. His eyes looked searchingly around as if looking for a weapon. His mother understood him.
"Raimund, Raimund, what are you going to do?"
"Make an end of it as soon as possible!"
"No man will ever know----"
"Will know? Who does not know it? Nadeska! the count! this man! Are my rank, my honor, my fortune to depend on the whim of a chambermaid, the discretion of a heartless roué, and the silence of a rope-dancer?
"Am I to wait till the people in the street----"
"I will kill every man who knows it! They shall die--they shall all die, if you but remain my own."
"And if they were to die, and if no one knew but you and I--yes, mother, if you were dead and the secret were buried in my bosom, I should not think it safe even there; I should hide myself and my disgrace in the lowest depths of the earth."
The princess covered her pale face with her thin hands. But this was not the moment to abandon herself to idle grief. She knew her son's character too well not to be aware that it was a question of life and death.
"Raimund," she said, starting up again, "you do not kill yourself only; you kill me too! You are my all, my sun, and my light! I never had another child but you. You do not know what it is to have a child and to love it, especially when one is as unhappy as I have been! I never loved the count. I could not have loved a roué who has wasted his fortune and his health in abominable profligacy. I became his wife because--because the czar would have it so. And I was so young at that time, and so frivolous and thoughtless, grown up in all the splendor and luxury of the most splendid and most luxurious court on earth! I was not a faithful wife--nor was the count a faithful husband. It mattered little to him; but he wished to get a hold on me in order to force me to provide for his mad expenditures. He had long watched me--till at last, I do not know yet by what unlucky accident or by whose treachery, he discovered my secret. From that moment my life has been a perpetual torture; I have grown old before my time. I never had anything but you and your love to warm my heart in this icy-cold world. If you rob me of that also, I must succumb. Raimund, is this your gratitude for all my love?"
The son had listened to his mother's cunning words, which interwove truth and fiction so skilfully, with an air as black as a wall of thunder-laden clouds.
"Show me the possibility of living," he replied, "and I will live. As it is, I cannot live. I cannot endure the consciousness that my blood is no better than that which flows in the veins of my groom."
"Am I not your mother?"
"Is that low person not my father?"
"Yes, Raimund, he is, and to him you owe your proud strength; to him you owe it, that all men appear weaklings by your side. Would you rather be the count's son and inherit his wretched feebleness, his poisoned blood? And do you fancy that in our veins no other blood flows but noble blood?--that your case is the only one in which a degenerate race has been renewed by an admixture of sound but humble blood? Shall I tell you a few anecdotes of our own circles? And do you think it is different in higher and the very highest families?"
The princess rose lightly from her chair and whispered something in her son's ear. But he grimly shook his head.
"Is it thus with us?" he said. "Then we had better break our swords to pieces, and drag our coats-of-arms through the mire. I have kept my honor unsullied; I have no sin on my conscience, but I must atone for the sins of others, before the tide rises higher and higher, and I get deeper and deeper into the mire. Do you know that the man with whom I had a personal encounter Under the Lindens a few days ago was this very man!" The prince pointed at the door through which Mr. Schmenckel had made his way out. "Do you know that I escaped but by a hair's breadth staining my sword with the blood of him who is my father? No! no! The measure is full to overflowing!"
"And Helen?" The prince shuddered.
The princess saw how deep that arrow had entered. A gleam of hope appeared to her; she thought she might after all be victorious in this conflict.
"Are you going to destroy your greatest happiness? will you make this angel also wretched? will you humiliate yourself before her, the proud beauty? Impossible! You cannot mean it. You are bound to life with chains of steel and with chains of roses. You can break the former, you dare not break these."
"It is in vain," said the prince; "all your words cannot remove this terrible burden!" He placed his hand on his breast. "Henceforth Farewell!"
He turned to go.
"Raimund!" screamed the princess, rising suddenly from her chair and clinging to her son, "what do you mean to do?"
"Nothing mean, be sure," he said, trying to disengage himself gently from her arms. "Farewell!"
"Go then, barbarian, and murder--" She could not finish; the terrible excitement of these last two scenes was too much for her suffering nerves; she sank fainting upon her chair.
At that moment Nadeska came back. A glance at the scene in the room told her what had happened.
"You will kill the poor lady," she said, hastening to assist her fainting mistress. "And why all this? It will never be known."
The prince laughed. It was a fearful laugh.
"Do you think so, Nadeska?" he said. "But suppose you talked in your dreams? Or have you sold your dreams also to the princess?"
He beat his forehead with his closed fist and rushed out.