CHAPTER XI.
We must return to the morning of this day, in order to take up the threads out of which the dark web of these events was spun.
Julie, after having twice sought in vain for her friend at his studio, had found it impossible, in the anxious state of her heart, to stay quietly at home. She went to Irene's, for she had found Angelica, who had not closed her eyes all night, sunk in a deep sleep. She felt herself greatly drawn toward the Fräulein, though she had seen her yesterday for the first time; all the more as Irene, too, was as little able as all the others to withstand the charm of Julie's character, and had attached herself to her with a warmth that appeared doubly great in contrast to her usual coy reserve. It had not been long, thanks to the freedom of the masquerade, before they stood on so familiar a footing as to call each other "Du;" and the startling incident that drove Jansen away from the ball so early had broken down the last trace of reserve in the friendship between them. They had remained together for a few hours longer. Julie, to whom Jansen had disclosed in a single word the mystery of the strange mask, had made no secret of the matter to her friends, among whom Irene was now counted.
She herself, while taking the occurrence greatly to heart, saw at once how much nearer the final crisis it had brought her. But the thought that she must leave him to fight out alone the battle that could not be avoided, was torture to her.
She wanted at least to be near him, to know every hour what he was doing, and, if it should be necessary, to be ready to restrain him from taking any violent steps. His withdrawing from her--although she knew that he had only done it to spare her--gave her great pain, and she felt now as if she knew for the first time how much she loved him.
In this mood she presented herself before Irene, who received her most tenderly. Felix, who had taken occasion to call as early as possible in the morning, had just taken his leave again, and the eyes and cheeks of the girl still glowed with the happiness of their reunion. The two friends had so much to confide to one another that they did not notice how the hours slipped by, and were very much surprised when the uncle, who, as a rule, never appeared before dinner-time, entered the room. Irene introduced him to Julie, and would not listen to such a thing as her going home to dinner.
The baron seconded her in her hospitable entreaties in his usual chivalrous manner; though he seemed not to be in as good spirits as was usual when he found himself in the presence of a beautiful lady. During the meal, also, he was noticeably depressed and preoccupied, keeping remarkably silent for him, sighing a great deal, and complaining of old age, which must overtake even the youngest uncles at last. Then again he would try to laugh, or tell one of his old bonmots; but he soon relapsed anew into a droll kind of melancholy, in which he railed at the uncertain lot of humanity and the mysteries of an irresponsible Providence.
When, after dinner, Irene was called out of the room by a chance caller whom she hoped quickly to get rid of, and the baron was left alone with Julie, he suddenly appeared to have gone fairly crazy. He sprang up, thrust his hands through his thin hair, plucked at his beard, took a cigar--which he immediately laid down again--and finally drew up his chair close to the sofa, where Julie was seated.
"Fräulein Julie," he said, with a deep sigh, "you will think it strange, but I can't help myself; will you hear me for ten minutes on a very serious matter, and then give me your advice and, if possible, your support?"
She looked at him in amazement, but nodded kindly.
"A terribly bad story," he continued; "though, for that matter, a story that is not without a parallel in this imperfect world of ours, and one that ought not, by good rights, to break the heart of an old lion-hunter. But the worst of it is, it so happens that I can turn to no one for advice and aid, except to a young lady whose delightful acquaintance I made but an hour ago. Now, my honored Fräulein, if I only knew of some married woman, or some respectable elderly lady, in whom I had confidence--truly, I would spare you and myself the embarrassment of having to talk to you about the old sins of my youth. But in all this circle--all bachelors and single women--you will understand, my dear Fräulein--"
"Speak out boldly, Herr Baron; I am thirty-one years old."
"No, my dear Fräulein, the baptismal certificate has nothing to do with this question; and, although I have the greatest respect for you--you are still far removed from the canonical age of a person inspiring respect. But I have learned, through my brother-in-arms Schnetz, how universally you are honored in Bohemia--pardon the expression, I mean in the so-called society of Paradise--and that it only needs a word from you to straighten out much more complicated affairs than this of mine.
"Perhaps you do not yet know--that is to say, you have undoubtedly known for a long time--for your talented friends do not generally keep secrets from one another--in short, I have a daughter--'Have her while she is mine,' as Polonius says--a daughter, of whose existence I had no suspicion until recently. Upon the discovery of my fathership I knocked at my heart, and waited to hear whether the so-called voice of Nature within would awaken. Pas le mains du monde. You will find this inhuman. But remember that I did not lead a worse life in this good town than was the fashion at that time, and that this adventure came half-way to meet me--I wish to throw no shadow either upon the girl or her parents--enfin, they were very cordial with me, and I, in return, possibly went too far. A few years afterward, I felt something like a gentle gnawing in my left side, where one is supposed to carry his conscience. As it did not subside, I wrote to this place in order to inquire, as a friend of the family, after the health of its different members. The letter was returned by the post, as the address could not be found.
"Now, looked at from a strictly moral point of view, I ought not to have felt, even after this, that I had justified myself. But what would you have? My contact with the king of the desert had somewhat hardened my skin, and the before-mentioned gnawing ceased. The girl had never been exactly what you would call beautiful, but was very attractive because of her freshness, her free nature, her merry laughter from a mouth of magnificent teeth. You know complexions of that kind have something especially dangerous about them for our weaker sex. To be brief, she had, in spite of all this, completely passed out of my memory until I saw her again to-day in her daughter--pardon, in our daughter, I meant to say."
"You sought out the girl? And how did the poor child receive you?"
"As badly as ever a child could receive its long-lost father. You can imagine, dear Fräulein, that it was no easy mission for me to fulfill. A man cuts such a wretched figure in the character of the repentant father, who, at the very first meeting with his grown-up daughter, is obliged to beg her pardon for having totally forgotten her. But there are sour apples into which one would rather bite than let himself be bitten by his conscience. I assumed a fatherly, venerable mien, and, when I entered the room where the girl was, and recognized in her her dead mother--as if the resemblance had been stolen from a mirror--I can assure you that at last the voice of Nature asserted itself. But scarcely had I introduced myself, with the necessary delicacy, to the unsuspecting child as one who had certain sacred, though long-neglected, rights to her childish affection, when the strange creature springs up like a little fury, and flies into the adjoining room. Now I ask you, my dear Fräulein, is a father who wishes to make good his faults a monster from whom one ought to run away? I stood there as if rooted to the spot; and, as soon as I recovered from my surprise, I did my best to conciliate my daughter through the bolted door. I spoke the kindest words to her, and promised her anything in the world if she would only be sensible and let me talk to her; and, truly, I must have succeeded in the end--the voice of Nature must finally have awakened even in her young bosom--when suddenly the old gentleman--my quasi father-in-law--entered the room. Would you believe it? this white-haired old man, instead of coming to my aid with the wisdom of a grandfather, suddenly becomes as wild and unreasonable as a youth, says the most incredible things to my very face, and while I, out of respect for his gray hairs and lost in astonishment, am at a loss what to answer, he takes me sans façon by the arm and leads me to the door, which he slams after me like a clap of thunder."
The energy with which he had related all this seemed suddenly to have taken away his breath. He sprang up, threw open the window, and took a few deep draughts of the cold winter air; then, burying his hands deep in the pockets of his short coat, he walked slowly back to where Julie was sitting.
"You must admit, my dear Fräulein," he said, "that this brutal reception was well calculated to silence the voice of Nature once more. This old--but no! He is right; if I had been in his place, and my son-in-law had taken twenty years to make up his mind to stammer out his peccavi, I should probably have been even less ceremonious, and have simply kicked the fellow down-stairs, even if I had done nothing worse to him. But still, as you can easily imagine, this encounter rather shattered me."
He threw himself into the chair again, sighed like a man in utter desperation, and ran his hands through his hair.
"And how can I help or advise you, Herr Baron?" asked Julie, after a pause. "It seems to me there is nothing left for you to do but to write to Herr Schoepf and to your daughter, and tell them by letter what they would neither of them listen to in their first excitement."
"Pardon, my dear Fräulein, that wouldn't do much good. These two mad beings would not treat my letters any better than they did their author. And yet, you will understand that I cannot rest content when my father-in-law and my daughter have turned me out-of-doors. I must atone for my old crime so far as such a thing is possible at this late day. For me, in my years and circumstances, to suddenly long for paternal joys, to receive this girl into my bachelor's quarters, and to introduce her to society as a young baroness--I, who have already had such a hard time with one grown-up daughter, by whom I am forced to let myself be ordered about--would be the height of the ridiculous: to say nothing of the fact that I doubt very much whether I should ever be able to tame this red-maned lioness. But, on the other hand, Father Schoepf, as he now calls himself, is no longer one of the youngest men in the world; and, aside from that, by no means a Crœsus. If the child stays with him, who knows but what she, too, will fall into bad hands, like her poor mother? And in case she should remain a good girl--you know, my dear Fräulein, that virtue as a sole dowry is not particularly in demand nowadays. I want, therefore, to secure for my daughter--whether she acknowledges me or not--a respectable marriage portion; not merely a dowry--it must be known that Fräulein Schoepf possesses in her own right so and so much property. Now, you see, my dear Fräulein, only such a soft and winning voice as yours can succeed in persuading Father Schoepf to consent to such an arrangement, which is so greatly for the interest of the child. Now, if I should send Schnetz to him, he would, if he had to deal with a man, fire up about his ridiculous manly honor, and the end of the story would be that Schnetz would likewise be shown the door. But you, if you will only consent--and why shouldn't you consent?--may even succeed in the end in inspiring this wild creature, my own flesh and blood, with some human emotion; so that she will feel for her papa, who really is no monster--but stop! the visit in the next room is over. Not a word of this to Irene. Promise me this. May I depend on you?"
He reached her both his hands across the table with such a true-hearted and, at the same time, comically-crushed manner, that she did not hesitate for a moment to close the bargain. In a second his mood seemed to have gone through a complete transformation. He sprang up, bent over her hand, which he eagerly kissed, and began to hum a tune and to light a cigar, talking all the while about the masked ball of the night before. His niece, when she entered again, laughingly asked what magic charm her beautiful friend had been using in her absence, to dispel so completely her dear uncle's melancholy mood.
Julie smiled and answered that people ought not to laugh at the secrets of magic, and the baron acted as though nothing at all had happened. Then the two friends took leave of one another. Julie was anxious to see Jansen again, whom she confidently hoped to find in his studio at this hour. But on the stairs, to which the baron escorted her, she whispered to him:
"Why don't you want to let Irene into the secret? Unless I am very much mistaken, she already knows the first half; you owe it to her to tell her the other half, which truly does you honor."
"Do you think so?" answered the baron. "Irene have a suspicion? Good God, these young girls nowadays! One takes great credit to one's self for the profound innocence and ignorance in which one has brought them up, and they are wiser than we ourselves! Well, then, in Heaven's name! one sour apple more; my teeth are yet on edge from the first one."
He kissed Julie's hand once more and returned, sighing, to his niece.