Primula also favored Emily's plan. "Flee, my children," she said, "from this rude Cimmerian sky to milder skies, away from these wild cyclopses and soulless ichthyophagi! Amid snow and ice even the blue cyane cannot thrive, much less the red rose of wild love."
Oswald was not so blinded that he could not have seen the insanity of the project, but he was pleased with the adventurous nature of the plan, and he was dazzled by the hope of thus ridding himself at one blow of all the troubles that beset him, no matter what the blow might cost. Finally, his attachment for Emily had grown from a mere whim into a full passion, which did not exactly warm his heart but influenced his imagination, and which he did not care to combat very earnestly because it afforded him a kind of excuse for his fickleness. He began to reflect seriously on the plan for an elopement, especially as the little remnant of his fortune was rapidly disappearing, owing to the life he was now leading, and he saw, therefore, that he would have to do quickly whatever was to be done.
Oswald would have liked to consult his friend Albert on this embarrassing subject, but he no longer ventured to speak to him about Emily. At first he had now and then dropped a word about his last romance, and Albert was one of those clever men who need be told only half a word to be at home in the most complicated affair. He had never troubled Oswald with curious questions, and yet knew how to draw from him very quickly nearly all he desired to hear. He knew that Oswald had secret meetings at Mrs. Jager's house, and across in Ferrytown; he knew who the young, thoughtless woman was, and he was yet by no means misled when Oswald suddenly ceased speaking of Emily. He only concluded that matters had entered that stage where silence becomes a duty.
Timm had not exactly desired that matters should go quite so far. Timm did not object to Oswald's reviving his taste for an aristocratic mode of life by an affair with a great lady, and to his becoming thus more and more anxious for larger means; but he did not desire that this should turn into a serious attachment, which might lead no one could tell where, and which, above all, threatened to become fatal to Oswald's romantic passion for Helen. For it was upon this love that Timm had based his whole plan. If Oswald could not be induced by any other means to enter into a lawsuit with the Grenwitz family for the legacy, then the hope of winning Helen should be his motive. Thus it was why Helen must not be lost for Oswald, nor Oswald for Helen. And even this might now happen. Albert, whose eyes were everywhere, had not failed to learn that Prince Waldenberg was daily at the Grenwitz mansion; he had discovered, besides, other suspicious evidences of the favorable progress of the new relations between Helen and the prince; as, for instance, magnificent bouquets ordered at the first florist's establishment by the prince, which were "to be sent that night to Grenwitz House." Since the snow was firm, and the jeunesse dorée was devising sleighing parties in all possible directions of the compass, he had, moreover, repeatedly seen Helen by the side of the prince in a magnificent sleigh, whose costly coverings, with the three horses harnessed abreast after Russian fashion, pointed it out as the property of his highness. He had as frequently warned Oswald against so dangerous a rival, but the latter had only given evasive answers. This state of things displeased Albert altogether, and he considered how he might, to use his own words, "get the cart into a new track."
He had not reappeared for some time at Grenwitz House. Felix had sent him, before leaving, four hundred dollars in advance for the month of November, taking it from his travelling money, and requesting him at the same time to address himself hereafter, "in all business matters," directly to his aunt, the baroness. Albert had as yet not availed himself of this permission, as it was difficult even for him to spend four hundred dollars a month in the modest town of Grunwald; and he had, besides, been specially successful at faro of late. Nevertheless, he proposed to pay his visit very soon, and to avail himself of the opportunity for a better examination of the whole situation.
It happened in these same days that Albert received one evening, just as he was going out, a letter by the town mail, which put him into such bad humor that he gave up his original intention to attend an extraordinary meeting of "the Rats" in the city cellar, and instead, paid a visit to his landlord--the sexton, Toby Goodheart--the man who had filled all the little crooked streets and lanes around St. Bridget's with the odor of his sanctity.
Mr. Toby Goodheart was a bachelor, because he was too ugly to obtain a wife, as he said himself: because his heaven-aspiring mind did not condescend to such worldly thoughts, as his admirers insisted upon believing. But neither the one nor the other could be the true reason, for Mr. Toby was not ugly, but a very good-looking man of some forty years, whose high forehead, bald at the temples, gave him a most god-fearing expression. Nor was Mr. Toby really so very god-fearing, unless his piety consisted in the solemn manner with which he stepped, Sunday after Sunday and year after year, dressed in his shiny-black dress-coat, black trousers, and a long flowing black gown fastened to the collar, through the church, pushing his velvet bag by means of a long pole under the noses of the "devout listeners." That Mr. Toby was in reality a son of Belial was known to but very few men in Grunwald, where the excellent man had now been living for twenty years--perhaps only to one single man, and that was the occupant of the two best rooms in the sexton's official dwelling: Mr. Albert Timm, surveyor.
Mr. Toby had dropped his mask in an evil hour, when the spirit of his much-beloved grog was stronger in him than the spirit of lies, and shown his true face to Mr. Timm, the "famous fellow." Mr. Toby Goodheart and Mr. Albert Timm had since that hour formed the closest intimacy, a friendship which was cemented and secured in its firmness and duration by a remarkable community of fondness for women, wine, and dice, and the common possession of delicate secrets.
Albert Timm entered the little room behind the parlor, where his landlord used to sit, with his hat on his head, and found the excellent man engaged in the pleasant occupation of preparing a glass of his favorite beverage.
"You may make one for me too," said Albert, throwing his hat upon a chair and himself into the corner of the well-padded sofa.