The old baroness looked surprised and a little indignant. It was no occasion to stand on trifles, but I did not wish to offend her at a time when her help might be urgently needed--perhaps within a few hours; so I made a low deferential bow and said:
"You will understand this rather unusual step, baroness, when I tell you that I have already declined to hold this interview with my cousin even in the presence of the Count von Nauheim, and that my object is merely to have direct from my cousin"s lips alone her wishes and intentions as to the future."
"I understand, Prince," she replied, with her stately bow; but I thought I could detect some symptoms of alarm. Whether this was merely awe of me, or the evidence of some other hidden fear, I could not decide. But the whole atmosphere of the palace reeked so foully with intrigue that I did not know whether she was true or in von Nauheim"s plot.
As I took my seat by Minna"s side she welcomed me with a little smile, which, sad and wan though it was, seemed like a little messenger of confidence. Then she put a hand on my arm and said wistfully:
"You will treat me quite frankly, cousin? I have been relying on that so strongly."
"As frankly as I can, but remember very little yet. Moreover, it is your frankness that is to be tested. Do you think you can trust me sufficiently to do as you said when I saw you last--tell me the whole of your wishes unreservedly?"
"Certainly I will," she replied instantly. "I have been waiting to do so ever since the day of my dear father"s funeral."
"I understood that I was to await some sign from you. You said as much,"
I reminded her.
"True; but your message to me, that you would seek an interview as soon as practicable, has kept me waiting till now. I have been impatient; but it does not matter now," she ended, with a smile.
"Who gave you my message?" I asked. I had sent none, of course, but guessed that it was a ruse of von Nauheim"s to keep us apart while he was away in Munich.
"The count himself," answered the girl in some astonishment, and with a look of quick suspicion. "Did you not send any?"
"There has been some misunderstanding," I said quietly. "But I was waiting to hear from you, and I was to the full as impatient as you could have been."
She cast her eyes down and frowned, and her little foot tapped quickly on the floor.
"It must be as you say--he misunderstood you--or else he was afraid of my speaking plainly to you while he was away." The first sentence was spoken with hesitation, the second quickly and with a touch of indignation, and directly afterward her pulse quickened and she said volubly: "Cousin Hans, I can tell you what I dared not tell my father. I am afraid of the count. You have asked me what I wish. I have two wishes--to be released from this marriage, and to stop all this hateful intrigue for the throne. I am not fit for it. I do not wish it. I am only afraid and hara.s.sed and distracted. Oh, I long with a regret I cannot put in words for the days of quiet and peace when none of this was ever thought of! Then I had not a care or grief, and now life is all fear and sorrow. I am the most miserable girl on earth."
She lifted her hands and let them fall again on her lap with a gesture eloquent of despair, and now that the momentary excitement had pa.s.sed her voice grew heavy with the accents of sorrow.
I was silent, not quite knowing how to meet such an outburst of grief and confidence.
More than that, however: I had heard with a rush of joy, which I dared not let her see, the outcry against the marriage. At that moment the feeling seemed to me like a guilty one, but I vowed to myself that if it cost me every drop of blood in my body I would save her from it. But I sat now grave, silent, and thoughtful, while the little pathetic glances of appeal for help which she cast at me shot right into my heart and thrilled me till I could scarcely hold myself under restraint.
When I did not reply--and I did not because I dared not trust myself--she sighed deeply, and said in a tone even more despairing than before:
"I suppose your silence means that you also are against me. Oh, this ambition! What a curse it is! What has it not cost us? But for it my brother would be alive to-day. My dear father was just as surely another of its victims. I am forced to sacrifice all I care for on earth and to wed a man whom I fear. And now you, fresh from a life of books, on whom I built so much, are caught by the same madness, the fever burns in your blood, and you join this mad hue-and-cry after ruin. Ambition--ah, my father often rated me for my lack of it; but what has it brought to us but death, and what does it promise but misery? Cousin Hans, I beseech you with all my heart and soul do not join with those against me. Try to see this with my eyes, and do not urge me. I know you will think me weak and a child, a feeble, helpless coward; but I cannot go on. You are now my only hope. Cousin, do say you will not side against me!"
As she spoke her hands clasped my arm as if clinging to me for help, and she gazed into my face with such yearning appeal that had I been a stone, or the stern, self-contained man I had tried to appear, I must have been moved. And I was no stone where she was concerned.
"G.o.d forbid that I should force you," I said, my voice scarcely steady, despite my efforts to control it. "Do not doubt that I am with you in whatever you decide."
"Oh, thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d! How I have hoped it! Now I have a friend indeed."
No words of mine can describe the radiant look that came on her face as she cried this; and the smile she gave me lives in my memory as one of the loveliest sights my eyes have ever beheld.
After this outburst of emotion we sat silent some minutes--she, in all innocence of relief, keeping my hand between her own two; and I, on my side, drinking in, until I was intoxicated, the sweetness of emotions such as had never stirred my heart before.
I made the first movement--a slight attempt to withdraw my hand. She let go, and then, with another smile of frank pleasure and trust, she said:
"Not only my cousin, but my friend."
"There is yet much to do," I said gently.
"But we shall do it together. I am no longer alone with all against me, even my dear father. Tell me what is first to be done. I know that you will be successful, for you have given me hope. Will you tell the Count von Nauheim that the marriage project is at an end, or shall I? I will, if you wish, though I have been afraid of him; but no longer, for you are on my side."
Sweet as these renewed protestations of trust were to my ears and senses, they were not without embarra.s.sment.
"If you trust me, you will have to do so wholly," I said; "and you must do as I wish, even if it is altogether distasteful to you."
"I will do whatever you tell me," she a.s.sented readily.
"Then in the first place we must act as if this conversation had altered nothing."
"Do you mean...?" she began, with a frown of repugnance, and then stopped.
"I mean that for the present your relations with the count must remain as they have been. Do not ask all my reasons. But for the present it is necessary that no one, you understand, no one shall have any thought that we are not going on with your father"s scheme." I told her then of von Nauheim"s visit to Munich and its result, and that before we settled anything we must know more. "I should be deceiving you," I added, "if I did not tell you that grave risks have yet to be run in this matter, and the danger to some of us may prove greater than we can avert. I cannot tell you all my thoughts, but I am going to Munich----"
"Ah, no, not there, cousin. That is where Gustav was killed."
"They will not kill me," I answered, smiling to rea.s.sure her. "It is essential for me to go that I may probe certain matters to the bottom.
Then I shall know better what to do for the best."
"You will never come back. They will not let you," she wailed, wringing her hands.
"We are not children to foster silly fears," I said. "Of course there are risks in going, but there is certain failure if I do not go. And I go forewarned, with your brother"s fate to caution me to be wary, and with the knowledge that you depend upon me to rouse my wits. Do not fear. I shall return and bring with me a plan of action. But if by any chance I should not, you will know there is danger for you. I shall leave Captain von Krugen here, and if on any day he does not hear from me, that very day you and the Baroness Gratz must leave the castle under his care, cross the French frontier, and fly to Paris. I shall leave full directions as to this with von Krugen. From Paris your cause can be best fought. But above all things be careful not to let your whereabouts be known to any one except the captain. He will know from me how to act."
She sat trembling and agitated.
"Why not say at once that the marriage has been broken off, that the plot is abandoned, and cross the frontier immediately?"
"Because I hope to win our way to a far different ending than exile.
That is well enough as a last resource of a helpless woman; but these men will find me--well, I will utter no big words till I know more and have done something. I am looking for a stroke of double cunning somewhere, and I do not expect to look in vain. In my view you are safe so long as these men believe we have no suspicion of them; but their att.i.tude toward you may change at any moment. And now remember that even von Krugen, honest and stanch as I believe him, must know nothing of our abandonment of the plot on which he has set his hopes. I am compelled to mislead even him, and the secret must be yours and mine--ours only. You promise?"
"From the bottom of my heart," she answered earnestly, putting her hand into mine. "When shall I see you again?" she asked suddenly. "I can be brave when you are with me, and I will try not to play the coward in your absence. But"--with a sigh--"I have no friend but you."
"Yes, you have a stanch and brave friend in Captain von Krugen," I answered, "and I shall be back within a few days."
I spoke cheeringly and as though with absolute conviction.
"You have opened a new gate of hope for me, cousin," she said as I rose from beside her. "But the thought of your leaving me is almost like shutting it again."
"It shall never be shut, if I can help it, until you have pa.s.sed through to a safe and happy life."
I spoke earnestly as I felt, and with that I left her.
I had much to do before I could set out on my journey, and one matter especially troubled me. I must stop von Fromberg from selling the property of which the old lawyer had spoken to me, and I was at a loss how to communicate with him. To send a letter through the post I dared not; to go to him myself was impossible; yet whom could I trust to carry a letter or message? If the sale were not stopped, suspicion would certainly be created; and after much consideration I resolved to word a guarded letter addressed to Henri Frombe, and entrust it to Steinitz. I had meant to take him with me to Munich lest I should need a.s.sistance, but this other matter was more urgent.