The accompanying crowd dispersed; there was no danger here, and most of them returned to the ruin. The couch was carried on towards the house, past the Frau President, who gazed at the unconscious form as if bereft of all capacity to understand and appreciate. The group of horrified girls stood huddled together, looking helplessly towards the young physician who walked beside the couch without noticing them. He kept his left arm around Henriette's waist; his right hand he had laid lightly upon Kitty's brow, as if to shield her from any shock if consciousness should return. He who was usually so reserved, who so carefully concealed all emotion, the man whom of late all had seen so gloomy and constrained, was now looking down with unconcealed tenderness upon the pale face lying upon the pillows, as if nothing existed for him in the world except this most sacred and dear treasure which he had just snatched from the grave.
Flora followed the silent group apart, as if bound by no tie to the three people whom misfortune had suddenly shown to be so closely allied. On the spot where the bearers had rested the water was standing in little pools; she walked through them not heeding the wet, and her long muslin train dragged damp and dirty over the gravelled path. Suddenly she tore the wreath of marguerites from her hair; it was a bitter mockery in the midst of all this horror; she plucked and pulled it to pieces mechanically as she walked along, and the little white stars lay scattered upon the ground over which she had passed.
She too passed her grandmother and her friends without heeding them. Her flashing glance rested immovably upon her lover's tall, commanding figure; evidently she momentarily expected that he would turn to her, and thus she followed him step by step to the house and across its threshold. The Frau President called after her; the earth was shaken by another loud crash from the ruins, followed by shouts and cries. She did not look round; the world might be dissolved behind her; she was inexorably resolved to assert her "rights."
[CHAPTER XXV.]
A silent night of anxious, breathless suspense ensued upon this horrible day. No one went to bed; the gas was lighted all over the house, the servants glided noiselessly about on tiptoe, or huddled whispering in corners, and when some fireman passed near the house, or a door was softly opened, all started as from an electric shock and hurried into the corridors, sure that some intelligence would be brought of the master of the house. But the night waned, and the dawn peeped in at the windows,—he never, never came.
The rosy light of a glorious morning shone upon Villa Baumgarten, making the broken window-panes glitter and shine. It entered the ball-room and kindled the crimson of the fallen canopy, it kissed the fading leaves of the festoons of green and the broken boughs of the plants brought from the conservatory;—what chaos reigned there! One single minute had converted the costly but frail "Arabian Nights' Entertainment" into a heap of ruins and fragments. The charming verses in praise of the bride were unspoken, and upon the spot where the bespangled genius should have hovered in a rosy cloud, the keen morning breeze toyed mockingly with shreds of pink and white tulle.
It was the first time, perhaps, that the light of dawn had seen these splendid interiors; no shutter had been closed, no shade drawn down,—it even stared in upon the gorgeous bedroom in the northeastern angle of the building, upon the violet silk draperies, the richly-carved bedstead covered with lace, and it might mirror itself in the diamonds strewn among the puffs of the Frau President's hair. The maid had not dared to offer her services to the old lady, who now and then would totter through the long suite of apartments, dragging after her her heavy yellow train among overturned furniture and statues toppled from their pedestals.
The cloud of tulle which she always wore about her neck and chin had become loosened, and the sharp, withered outline of the lower portion of her face and of the throat was painfully evident. Yes, she was very old, and the sun of her life was low on the horizon; nevertheless, her aged brain was busy with but one absorbing thought, "Who is Moritz's heir?" She herself had not the slightest claim upon the wealth of the man so suddenly snatched away, not even upon the bed in which she slept or the plate from which she ate. The councillor had been early left an orphan; so far as she knew, he had no existing relatives of his name; but had he not continually sent a subsistence to a sister of his mother's living on the Rhine? Would she inherit his wealth? The idea was maddening. The wife of an obscure clerk, a needy seamstress, would then take possession of this colossal fortune, and the Frau President Urach, who for years had not been able to conceive how any one could move without silken-cushioned equipages, how any one could dine without lackeys in waiting, or sleep unless in a bed canopied with silk, would have to rout out her old furniture from the garrets whither it had been banished, and hire narrow lodgings where there were no stables filled with horses, no liveried servants and princely ménage, for neither she nor her granddaughters were connected by any tie of blood with the millionaire who had gone out of the world intestate.
The guests invited from the neighbourhood had remained with the old lady until midnight, and, although no distinct mention had been made of this subject, there had not been lacking allusions to the business complications that must ensue upon the catastrophe, since the councillor had kept all his ledgers and business papers of every description in the tower, and not a scrap of them was to be found.
But, although enormous sums had thus been destroyed, did not she, the Frau President, at present make her home upon an estate valued at many thousands? Were not the vaults of the plate-chamber beneath her feet? Were not the stables full of thorough-bred horses? And was not the collection of paintings of incalculable value? All this would more than suffice to ensure a luxurious existence to the old lady to the end of her days, if only she could prove that one drop of blood in her aristocratic veins came from the same source that had given life to the rope-maker's son.