Volume Ii Part 13 (1/2)
But the Colonel cried, again and again, ”What n.o.bility of mind! What loftiness of character! Who is there like this man of men--my heart's own friend for ever!” Then he pressed Moritz, Angelica, and his own wife, to his heart, and said laughingly, that he did not care to hear another syllable about the wicked plot they had been laying against him, and hoped, too, that Angelica would have no more trouble with spectral eyes.
It being now well on in the day, the Colonel begged Moritz and the Count to remain and have dinner. Dagobert was sent for, and arrived in high spirits.
When they sat down to table, Marguerite was missing. It appeared she had shut herself up in her room, saying she was unwell and unable to join the company. ”I do not know,” said Madame von G----, ”what has been the matter with Marguerite for some time; she has been full of the strangest fancies, laughing and crying without apparent reason. Really, she is at times almost unendurable.”
”Your happiness is Marguerite's death,” Dagobert whispered to Moritz.
”Spirit-seer!” answered Moritz in the same tone, ”do not mar my joy.”
The Colonel had never been in better spirits or happier, and Madame von G---- had never been so pleased in the depths of her heart, relieved as she was from anxieties which had often been present with her before.
When, in addition to this, Dagobert was revelling in the most brilliant high-spirits, and the Count, forgetting his pain, suffered the stores of his much experienced mind to stream forth in rich abundance. It will be seen that our couple of lovers were encircled by a rich garland of gladness.
Evening was coming on, the n.o.blest wines were pearling in the gla.s.ses, toasts to the health of the betrothed pair were drunk enthusiastically; when suddenly the door opened and Marguerite came tottering in, in white night-gear, with her hair down, pale, and distorted, like death itself.
”Marguerite, what extraordinary conduct!” the Colonel cried.
But, paying no heed to him, she dragged herself up to Moritz, placed her ice-cold hand on his breast, laid a gentle kiss on his brow, murmured in a faint, hollow voice, ”The kiss of the dying brings luck to the happy bridegroom,” and sank on the floor.
”This poor foolish girl is in love with Moritz,” Dagobert whispered to the Count, who answered--
”I know. I suppose she has carried her foolishness so far as to take poison.”
”Good heavens!” cried Dagobert, starting up and hurrying to the arm-chair where they had placed poor Marguerite. Angelica and her mother were busy besprinkling her and rubbing her forehead with essences. When Dagobert went up she opened her eyes.
”Keep yourself quiet, my dear child,” said Madame von G----; ”you are not very well, but you will soon be better--you will soon be better!”
Marguerite answered in a feeble, hollow voice, ”Yes; it will soon be over. I have taken poison.”
Angelica and her mother screamed aloud.
”Thousand devils!” cried the Colonel. ”The mad creature! Run for the doctor! Quick! The first and best that's to be found; bring him here instantly!”
The servants, Dagobert himself, were setting off in all haste.
”Stop!” cried the Count, who had been sitting very quietly hitherto, calmly and leisurely emptying a beaker of his favourite wine--the fiery Syracuse. ”If Marguerite has taken poison, there is no need to send for a doctor, for, in this case, I am the very best doctor that could possibly be called in. Leave matters to me.”
He went to Marguerite, who was lying profoundly insensible, only giving an occasional convulsive twitch. He bent over her, and was seen to take a small box out of his pocket, from which he took something between his fingers, and this he gently rubbed over Marguerite's neck and the region of her heart. Then coming away from her, he said to the others, ”She has taken opium; but she can be saved by means which I can employ.”
By the Count's directions Marguerite was taken upstairs to her room, where he remained with her alone. Meanwhile, Madame von G---- had found the phial which had contained the opium-drops prescribed some time previously for herself. The unfortunate girl had taken the whole of the contents of the phial.
”The Count is really a wonderful man,” Dagobert said, with a slight touch of irony. ”He divines everything. The moment he saw Marguerite he knew she had taken poison, and next he knew exactly the name and colour of it.”
In half-an-hour the Count came and a.s.sured the company that Marguerite was out of danger, as far as her life was concerned. With a side-glance at Moritz, he added that he hoped to remove all cause of mischief from her mind as well. He desired that a maid should sit up with the patient, whilst he himself would spend the night in the next room, to be at hand in case anything fresh should transpire; but he wished to prepare and strengthen himself for this by a few more gla.s.ses of wine; for which end he sat down at table with the other gentlemen, whilst Angelica and her mother, being upset by what had happened, withdrew.
The Colonel was greatly annoyed at this silly trick, as he called it, of Marguerite's, and Moritz and Dagobert felt very eery and uncanny over the whole affair; but the more out of tune they were the more did the Count give the rein to a joviality which had never been seen in him before, and which, in sober truth, had a certain amount of gruesomeness about it.
”This Count,” Dagobert said to Moritz, as they walked away, ”has a something most eerily repugnant to me about him, in some strange inexplicable way. I cannot help a feeling that there must be something exceedingly mysterious connected with him.”
”Ah!” said Moritz, ”there is a weight as of lead on my heart. I am filled with a dim foreboding that some dark mischance threatens my love.”
That night the Colonel was aroused from sleep by a courier from the Residenz. Next morning he came to his wife, looking rather pale, and constraining himself to a calmness which he was far from feeling, said, ”We have to be parted again, dearest child. There's going to be another campaign, after this little bit of a rest. I shall have to march off with the regiment as soon as ever I can, perhaps this evening.”