Part 28 (2/2)
”And the Princess Hildegarde?”
”She is a woman for whom I would gladly lay down my life.”
”Yes, yes!” I said impatiently. ”Who made her the woman she is? Who taught her to shoot and fence?”
”It was I.”
”You?”
”Yes. From childhood she has been under my care. Her mother did so desire. She is all I have in the world to love. And she loves me, Herr; for in all her trials I have been her only friend. But why do you ask these questions?” a sudden suspicion lighting his eyes.
”I love her.”
He took me by the shoulders and squared me in front of him.
”How do you love her?” a glint of anger mingling with the suspicion.
”I love her as a man who wishes to make her his wife.”
His hands trailed down my sleeves till they met and joined mine.
”I will tell you all there is to be told. Herr, there was once a happy family in the palace of the Hohenphalians. The Prince was rather wild, but he loved his wife. One day his cousin came to visit him. He was a fascinating man in those days, and few women were there who would not give an ear to his flatteries. He was often with the Princess, but she hated him. One day an abominable thing happened. This cousin loved the Princess. She scorned him. As the Prince was entering the boudoir this cousin, making out that he was unconscious of the husband's approach, took the Princess in his arms and kissed her. The Prince was too far away to see the horror in his wife's face. He believed her to be acquiescent. That night he accused her. Her denials were in vain.
He confronted her with his cousin, who swore before the immortal G.o.d himself that the Princess had lain willing in his arms. From that time on the Prince changed. He became reckless; he fell in with evil company; he grew to be a shameless ruffian, a man who brought his women into his wife's presence, and struck her while they were there. And in his pa.s.sions he called her terrible names. He made a vow that when children came he would make them things of scorn. In her great trouble, the Princess came to my inn, where the Princess Hildegarde was born. The Prince refused to believe that the child was his. My mistress finally sickened and died--broken-hearted. The Prince died in a gambling den. The King became the guardian of the lonely child. He knows but little, or he would not ask Her Highness--” He stopped.
”He would not ask her what?”
”To wed the man who caused all this trouble.”
”What! Prince Ernst?”
”Yes. I prayed to G.o.d, Herr, that your friend's bullet would carry death. But it was not to be.”
”I am going back to London,” said I. ”When I have settled up my affairs there I shall return.”
”And then?”
”Perhaps I shall complete what my friend began.”
I climbed into the ramshackle conveyance and was driven away. Once I looked back. The innkeeper could be seen on the porch, then he became lost to view behind the trees. Far away to my left the stones in the little cemetery on the hillside shone with brilliant whiteness.
CHAPTER XVI
There were intervals during the three months which followed when I believed that I was walking in a dream, and waking would find me grubbing at my desk in New York. It was so unreal for these days; mosaic romance in the heart of prosaic fact! Was there ever the like?
It was real enough, however, in the daytime, when the roar of London hammered at my ears, but when I sat alone in my room it a.s.sumed the hazy garments of a dream. Sometimes I caught myself listening for Hillars: a footstep in the corridor, and I would take my pipe from my mouth and wait expectantly. But the door never opened and the footsteps always pa.s.sed on. Often in my dreams I stood by the river again. There is solace in these deep, wide streams. We come and go, our hopes, our loves, our ambitions. Nature alone remains. Should I ever behold Gretchen again? Perhaps. Yet, there was no thrill at the thought. If ever I beheld her again it would be when she was placed beyond the glance of my eye, the touch of my hand. She was mine, aye, as a dream might be; something I possessed but could not hold. Heigho!
the faces that peer at us from the firelight shadows! They troop along in a ghostly cavalcade, and the winds that creep over the window sill and under the door--who can say that they are not the echoes of voices we once heard in the past?
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