"The lips alone, they are still red,
But soon they will be pale and dead."
Helen trembled in all her limbs. She knew the singer could not look up into the lighted room; but she felt as if his eyes--his blue dreamy eyes--were resting on her. She dared not move, she hardly dared to breathe. Once more, but at a greater distance now, scarcely to be distinguished, he sang:
"The lips alone, they are still red, But soon they will be pale and dead."
Helen thought of the image in her dream, the pale crucified one, who shook his head so sadly when the priest was saying the blessing; and she thought of the dagger which had been thrust into his side up to the golden hilt, and of the drops of blood which slowly trickled down, and shuddering, she pressed, her face in her hands.
CHAPTER V.
From the moment when an accident had thrown into Albert Timm's hand that famous package of faded letters, bound up with red-silk ribbon, and long hid in the archives of Grenwitz, the lucky finder had not rested till he had found out, if not all, at least most of the threads of the secret web which he had so unexpectedly touched; then he had set to work making a good stout tissue of it. The work had not been easy. He had been forced to use all his ingenuity and all his inventive power, and finally, when the decisive moment occurred in the interview with Felix and the baroness, all his coolness and boldness. But the venture had succeeded. The captured quarry was struggling in the meshes, and the excellent huntsman rejoiced at it. No sportsman could blame him for his joy. Now farewell to labor and trouble! Welcome, sweet leisure, which would allow him to rest after his work! Four hundred dollars a month for a whole year, and then, "after so many sorrows," a few thousand dollars extra. Albert Timm would not have been the contented redskin he was, if he had not left it with unbounded confidence to the Great Spirit to care mercifully hereafter for his red child.
Nevertheless, Albert Timm was too good a sportsman, in spite of all his modesty, not to know the old rule, that one must always have "two string's to the bow." Albert Timm had a second string to his bow, and the manner in which he had twisted this string according to all the rules of his art out of innocent sheep-sinews was so odd that the artist himself could not help laughing heartily whenever he thought of the story. Or was it perhaps not odd at all, that the man whose the booty legally was, not only never suspected it, but actually had been good-natured and stupid enough to become the intimate friend of the poacher. Not odd at all that Albert Timm, feeling the first four hundred dollars, hard-earned money, in his pocket, and sitting in the city cellar of Grunwald to drink his own health and a happy issue of all his plans, should have used the lupus in fabula, Mr. Oswald Stein, and thus been able to treat him with champagne and oysters, for which he paid with the very money out of which he had cheated him. He who did not think this remarkably odd or witty, as Albert Timm called it, had doubtless no eye for comical combinations, such as accident from time to time shakes together in the kaleidoscope of life.
Partly to enjoy the comedy and partly for the sake of a "second string," Albert Timm had met his old acquaintance from Grenwitz with open arms, and had even carried the fun so far as to offer to become his intimate friend. He calculated thus: It cannot be a bad speculation in any case to be the friend of this disinherited knight. If the Grenwitz keep their word and pay punctually--good; then it is a beautiful evidence of your good heart, to let part of the abundance drop into the lap of the knight who has unconsciously procured it for you. If Anna Maria (he thought he was sure of Felix) wishes to break the contract, or if an unforeseen accident relieves you of your promise, still better; then your disinterested friendship for the knight whose claims you then boldly advocate, gives you the strongest claim upon his gratitude--in dollars.
Thus or nearly thus, the first sketch of his outline had been formed, when Albert met Stein that night in the city cellar. Since that time he had employed his leisure hours (and he had now an abundance) to fill up the sketch, and he was so much pleased with his new plan, that he was already considering whether it would not be better, after all, to overthrow the legitimate ruling dynasty, and to proclaim Oswald as the pretender. However, to act suddenly is not the manner of Indians, and to throw away muddy water before you have clear water, is folly. Albert found upon thoughtful reflection that Oswald was not quite ripe yet for the part which he meant him to play. Oswald was an enthusiast, and enthusiasts have all kinds of odd notions in their heads. For instance: "Property is theft," or "the true beggars are the true kings," and so forth. Might he not take up one of these odd notions at the very moment when he ought to have acted promptly? It is true he found Oswald greatly changed since he had seen him last. He seemed to have laid aside his dreamy sentimentality, and to be filled with a concealed restlessness, which broke forth now in extravagant merriment, and now in savage, ironical bitterness. But who can ever judge rightly of problematic characters? A remnant of the old ideology was no doubt still there, and that had first to be driven out thoroughly. Faust, just escaped from his cell, must find it impossible to return; he must be taught to relish gay life; and how could he have found a better teacher in this noble art than in the past grand master of all merry fellows, the invincible Albert Timm, whose very sight was a laughing protest against all old fogyism. And then there was a will-o'-the-wisp with which the knight, wandering helplessly in the labyrinth of his passions, could be led far into the morass, from where there was no escape. This will-o'-the-wisp was love; his love for a certain great and rich lady, for whose sake it was well worth while to leave the straight road; a love which the knight had in the meantime confessed to his friend, and which the friend fanned in a way which would have done honor to the cleverest Marinelli. When the knight was once lured far enough to make the return impossible, when he had been turned round and round till he knew no longer where his head was, then the moment had come when he might go up to him and say: Honored knight, what will you give your Pylades if he enables you to possess all the glorious things which heretofore have been mere phantoms seen in voluptuous dreams, in tangible reality?
Unfortunately Oswald spared him much of the trouble. He was at that time unhappier and less self-reliant than he had ever been before. Berger's doctrine of contempt was a bad seed, which had fallen upon soil only too fertile. And since Oswald thought he had been betrayed by Melitta, he had, in order to be able the more readily to betray her himself, irrevocably lost the better part of his self-respect. It did not avail him that he charged all the blame of the rupture with Melitta upon her, that he called her a heartless coquette, who had betrayed him disgracefully, and who now laughed at the poor victim (how many were there in all?) in the arms of her lover. There was a voice continually whispering to him, which he could not silence, and which repeated again and again: You lie, you lie; a woman with such deep, loving eyes is not heartless; a woman capable of such love is not a coquette; a woman with such noble thoughts and feelings does not betray the man whose happiness she knows is in herself alone.