"It occurred," said I, feeling my strength ebb and despair set in, "it occurred--the prince compelled me to the meet him."
"But my cousin Otto is no a.s.sa.s.sin?
"Compelled, I say: that is, he conceived I had injured him, and left me no other way of making amends."
Her defence of Otto was in reality the vehement cherishing of her idea of me. This caused her bewilderment, and like a barrier to the flowing of her mind it resisted and resisted. She could not suffer herself to realize that I was one of the brainless young savages, creatures with claws and fangs.
Her face was unchanged to me. The homeliness of her large mild eyes embraced me unshadowed, and took me to its inner fire unreservedly.
Leaning in my roomy chair, I contemplated her at leisure while my heart kept saying "Mine! mine!" to awaken an active belief in its possession.
Her face was like the quiet morning of a winter day when cloud and sun intermix and make an ardent silver, with lights of blue and faint fresh rose; and over them the beautiful fold of her full eyebrow on the eyelid like a bending upper heaven. Those winter mornings are divine. They move on noiselessly. The earth is still, as if awaiting. A wren warbles, and flits through the lank drenched brambles; hill-side opens green; elsewhere is mist, everywhere expectancy. They bear the veiled sun like a sangreal aloft to the wavy marble flooring of stainless cloud.
She was as fair. Gazing across her shoulder"s gentle depression, I could have desired to have the couchant brow, and round cheek, and rounding chin no more than a young man"s dream of woman, a picture alive, without the animating individual awful mind to judge of me by my acts. I chafed at the thought that one so young and lovely should meditate on human affairs at all. She was of an age to be maidenly romantic: our situation favoured it. But she turned to me, and I was glad of the eyes I knew.
She kissed me on the forehead.
"Sleep," she whispered.
I feigned sleep to catch my happiness about me.
Some disenchanting thunder was coming, I was sure, and I was right. My father entered.
"Princess!" He did amazed and delighted homage, and forthwith uncontrollably poured out the history of my heroism, a hundred words for one;--my prompt.i.tude in picking the prince"s glove up on my sword"s point, my fine play with the steel, my scornful magnanimity, the admiration of my fellow-students;--every line of it; in stupendous language; an artillery celebration of victory. I tried to stop him.
Ottilia rose, continually a.s.senting, with short affirmatives, to his glorifying interrogations--a method he had of recapitulating the main points. She glanced to right and left, as if she felt caged.
"Is it known?" I heard her ask, in the half audible strange voice which had previously made me tremble.
"Known? I certify to you, princess,"--the unhappy man spouted his withering fountain of interjections over us anew; known in every Court and garrison of Germany! Known by this time in Old England! And, what was more, the correct version of it was known! It was known that the young Englishman had vanquished his adversary with the small sword, and had allowed him, because he had raged demoniacally on account of his lamed limb, to have a shot in revenge.
"The honour done me by the princess in visiting me is not to be known,"
I summoned energy enough to say.
She shook her head.
My father pledged himself to the hottest secresy, equivalent to a calm denial of the fact, if necessary.
"Pray be at no trouble," she addressed him.
The "Where am I?" look was painful in her aspect.
It led me to perceive the difference of her published position in visiting a duellist lover instead of one a.s.sa.s.sinated. In the latter case, the rashness of an hereditary virgin princess avowing her attachment might pa.s.s condoned or cloaked by general compa.s.sion. How stood it in the former? I had dragged her down to the duellist"s level!
And as she was not of a nature to practise concealments, and scorned to sanction them, she was condemned, seeing that concealment as far as possible was imperative, to suffer bitterly in her own esteem. This, the cruellest, was the least of the evils. To keep our names disjoined was hopeless. My weakened frame and mental misery coined tears when thoughts were needed.
Presently I found the room empty of our poor unconscious tormentor.
Ottilia had fastened her hand to mine again.
"Be generous," I surprised her by saying. "Go back at once. I have seen you! Let my father escort you the road. You will meet the margravine, or some one. I think, with you, it will be the margravine, and my father puts her in good humour. Pardon a wretched little scheme to save you from annoyance! So thus you return within a day, and the margravine, shelters you. Your name will not be spoken. But go at once, for the sake of Prince Ernest. I have hurt him already; help me to avoid doing him a mortal injury. It was Schwartz who drove you? our old Schwartz! Old Warhead! You see, we may be safe; only every fresh minute adds to the danger. And another reason for going-another--"
"Ah!" she breathed, "my Harry will talk himself into a fever."
"I shall have it if the margravine comes here."
"She shall not be admitted."
"Or if I hear her, or hear that she has come! Consent at once, and revive me. Oh! I am begging you to leave me, and wishing it with all my soul. Think over what I have done. Do not write to me. I shall see the compulsion of mere kindness between the lines. You consent. Your wisdom I never doubt--I doubt my own."
"When it is yours you would persuade me to confide in?" said she, with some sorrowful archness.
Wits clear as hers could see that I had advised well, except in proposing my father for escort. It was evidently better that she should go as she came.
I refrained from asking her what she thought of me now. Suing for immediate pardon would have been like the applying of a lancet to a vein for blood: it would have burst forth, meaning mere words coloured by commiseration, kindness, desperate affection, anything but her soul"s survey of herself and me; and though I yearned for the comfort pa.s.sion could give me, I knew the mind I was dealing with, or, rather, I knew I was dealing with a mind; and I kept my tongue silent. The talk between us was of the possible date of my recovery, the hour of her return to the palace, the writer of the unsigned letters, books we had read apart or peeped into together. She was a little quicker in speech, less meditative. My sensitive watchfulness caught no other indication of a change.
My father drove away an hour in advance of the princess to encounter the margravine.
"By," said he, rehearsing his exclamation of astonishment and delight at meeting her, "by the most miraculous piece of good fortune conceivable, dear madam. And now comes the question, since you have condescended to notice a solitary atom of your acquaintance on the public highroad, whether I am to have the honour of doubling the freight of your carriage, or you will deign to embark in mine? But the direction of the horses" heads must be reversed, absolutely it must, if your Highness would repose in a bed to-night. Good. So. And now, at a conversational trot, we may happen to be overtaken by acquaintances."
I had no doubt of his drawing on his rarely-abandoned seven-league boots of jargon, once so delicious to me, for the margravine"s entertainment.
His lack of discernment in treating the princess to it ruined my patience.
The sisters Aennchen and Lieschen presented themselves a few minutes before his departure. Lieschen dropped at her feet.
"My child," said the princess, quite maternally, "could you be quit of your service with the Mahrlens for two weeks, think you, to do duty here?"
"The Professor grants her six hours out of the twenty-four already,"
said I.
"To go where?" she asked, alarmed.
"To come here."
"Here? She knows you? She did not curtsey to you."
"Nurses do not usually do that."
The appearance of both girls was pitiable; but having no suspicion of the cause for it, I superadded,
"She was here this morning."
"Ah! we owe her more than we were aware of."
The princess looked on her kindly, though with suspense in the expression.
"She told me of my approaching visitor," I said.
"Oh! not told!" Lieschen burst out.
"Did you,"--the princess questioned her, and murmured to me, "These children cannot speak falsehoods," they shone miserably under the burden of uprightness "did you make sure that I should come?"
Lieschen thought--she supposed. But why? Why did she think and suppose?
What made her antic.i.p.ate the princess"s arrival? This inveterate why communicated its terrors to Aennchen, upon whom the princess turned scrutinizing eyes, saying, "You write of me to your sister?"