The coachman and the stable-boys, who had looked on at this singular scene in open-mouthed surprise, were so taken aback by his manner, that, without attempting to make any effort in behalf of the prisoner, they officiously hastened to lend assistance in leading the horses into the barn. Felix gave a few directions about how they were to be treated, and threw a thaler to each of the men. Then he took the lantern in his hand again, gave orders that no one should follow him, and strode across the yard to join his friend.
CHAPTER X.
While this violent and yet almost ridiculous scene was enacted in the court, Jansen had been mounting the dark stairs with a heavy foot and a heavier breath. No sound of a human being was heard in the house; only the roaring and crackling of the open fire in the kitchen below. Half way up the stairs he stood still and listened; it seemed to him as if he heard the voice of his child. But it was only the ringing in his ears, as the blood seemed to surge and boil in his veins.
"She will be asleep by this time," he said to himself. "So much the better! She won't hear then what I have to say to her mother."
He trembled all over. And yet he had no fear of this meeting, that was to be the last. He was afraid of himself, of the dark, violent spirit that made him clinch his fists and gnash his teeth. "Be quiet!" he said to himself, "be quiet! She is not worth such fury!"
He hastened up the last few steps and found himself in a long, dark corridor. At one end a thin ray of light made its way through a keyhole, and a broader gleam shone through the crack between the door and the bent and warping threshold.
"It must be there!" he said. He took off his hat, and passed his hand through his wet hair. "Let us make an end of it!" said he, unconsciously repeating over and over again the words "an end!--an end--an end!"
Then he stood before the door and listened. A voice which he did not recognize was speaking; he stooped down and peeped in through the keyhole. His eye lighted directly upon the face of an elderly woman who was talking earnestly, but perfectly quietly. He recognized the old singer, his wife's mother, whom he had always disliked even at the time of his maddest infatuation. She sat in a corner of the sofa, and drank now and then, in the short pauses she made, from a little silver cup that stood by the side of a traveling-flask. At the same time she broke up a biscuit and put the pieces in her mouth with an affected movement of the hand, all the while displaying her false teeth to advantage. Near her, sunk back in an arm-chair, lay her daughter; she was dressed entirely in black, which became her white skin and deep blue eyes charmingly. She was playing with a pair of scissors, making them flash in the candle-light, and looked as wearied and indifferent to all about her, as though she had just come home from the theatre where she been acting in some tiresome piece with only tolerable success.
Suddenly she sprang up with a loud shriek. The door had opened noiselessly; and, instead of the young companion whom she had expected to see enter, the very man stood before her, from whom she had fled to this obscure hiding-place.
The words died on her lips; even the old actress, who was not ordinarily easily disconcerted, sat as if she were petrified; and only her fingers, still convulsively crumbling up the biscuits, seemed to be alive.