Part 38 (1/2)
”The lips alone, they are still red, But soon they will be pale and dead.”
Helen trembled in all her limbs. She knew the singer could not look up into the lighted room; but she felt as if his eyes--his blue dreamy eyes--were resting on her. She dared not move, she hardly dared to breathe. Once more, but at a greater distance now, scarcely to be distinguished, he sang:
”The lips alone, they are still red, But soon they will be pale and dead.”
Helen thought of the image in her dream, the pale crucified one, who shook his head so sadly when the priest was saying the blessing; and she thought of the dagger which had been thrust into his side up to the golden hilt, and of the drops of blood which slowly trickled down, and shuddering, she pressed, her face in her hands.
CHAPTER V.
From the moment when an accident had thrown into Albert Timm's hand that famous package of faded letters, bound up with red-silk ribbon, and long hid in the archives of Grenwitz, the lucky finder had not rested till he had found out, if not all, at least most of the threads of the secret web which he had so unexpectedly touched; then he had set to work making a good stout tissue of it. The work had not been easy.
He had been forced to use all his ingenuity and all his inventive power, and finally, when the decisive moment occurred in the interview with Felix and the baroness, all his coolness and boldness. But the venture had succeeded. The captured quarry was struggling in the meshes, and the excellent huntsman rejoiced at it. No sportsman could blame him for his joy. Now farewell to labor and trouble! Welcome, sweet leisure, which would allow him to rest after his work! Four hundred dollars a month for a whole year, and then, ”after so many sorrows,” a few thousand dollars extra. Albert Timm would not have been the contented redskin he was, if he had not left it with unbounded confidence to the Great Spirit to care mercifully hereafter for his red child.
Nevertheless, Albert Timm was too good a sportsman, in spite of all his modesty, not to know the old rule, that one must always have ”two string's to the bow.” Albert Timm had a second string to his bow, and the manner in which he had twisted this string according to all the rules of his art out of innocent sheep-sinews was so odd that the artist himself could not help laughing heartily whenever he thought of the story. Or was it perhaps not odd at all, that the man whose the booty legally was, not only never suspected it, but actually had been good-natured and stupid enough to become the intimate friend of the poacher. Not odd at all that Albert Timm, feeling the first four hundred dollars, hard-earned money, in his pocket, and sitting in the city cellar of Grunwald to drink his own health and a happy issue of all his plans, should have used the _lupus in fabula_, Mr. Oswald Stein, and thus been able to treat him with champagne and oysters, for which he paid with the very money out of which he had cheated him. He who did not think this remarkably odd or witty, as Albert Timm called it, had doubtless no eye for comical combinations, such as accident from time to time shakes together in the kaleidoscope of life.
Partly to enjoy the comedy and partly for the sake of a ”second string,” Albert Timm had met his old acquaintance from Grenwitz with open arms, and had even carried the fun so far as to offer to become his intimate friend. He calculated thus: It cannot be a bad speculation in any case to be the friend of this disinherited knight. If the Grenwitz keep their word and pay punctually--good; then it is a beautiful evidence of your good heart, to let part of the abundance drop into the lap of the knight who has unconsciously procured it for you. If Anna Maria (he thought he was sure of Felix) wishes to break the contract, or if an unforeseen accident relieves you of your promise, still better; then your disinterested friends.h.i.+p for the knight whose claims you then boldly advocate, gives you the strongest claim upon his grat.i.tude--in dollars.
Thus or nearly thus, the first sketch of his outline had been formed, when Albert met Stein that night in the city cellar. Since that time he had employed his leisure hours (and he had now an abundance) to fill up the sketch, and he was so much pleased with his new plan, that he was already considering whether it would not be better, after all, to overthrow the legitimate ruling dynasty, and to proclaim Oswald as the pretender. However, to act suddenly is not the manner of Indians, and to throw away muddy water before you have clear water, is folly. Albert found upon thoughtful reflection that Oswald was not quite ripe yet for the part which he meant him to play. Oswald was an enthusiast, and enthusiasts have all kinds of odd notions in their heads. For instance: ”Property is theft,” or ”the true beggars are the true kings,” and so forth. Might he not take up one of these odd notions at the very moment when he ought to have acted promptly? It is true he found Oswald greatly changed since he had seen him last. He seemed to have laid aside his dreamy sentimentality, and to be filled with a concealed restlessness, which broke forth now in extravagant merriment, and now in savage, ironical bitterness. But who can ever judge rightly of problematic characters? A remnant of the old ideology was no doubt still there, and that had first to be driven out thoroughly. Faust, just escaped from his cell, must find it impossible to return; he must be taught to relish gay life; and how could he have found a better teacher in this n.o.ble art than in the past grand master of all merry fellows, the invincible Albert Timm, whose very sight was a laughing protest against all old fogyism. And then there was a will-o'-the-wisp with which the knight, wandering helplessly in the labyrinth of his pa.s.sions, could be led far into the mora.s.s, from where there was no escape. This will-o'-the-wisp was love; his love for a certain great and rich lady, for whose sake it was well worth while to leave the straight road; a love which the knight had in the meantime confessed to his friend, and which the friend fanned in a way which would have done honor to the cleverest Marinelli. When the knight was once lured far enough to make the return impossible, when he had been turned round and round till he knew no longer where his head was, then the moment had come when he might go up to him and say: Honored knight, what will you give your Pylades if he enables you to possess all the glorious things which heretofore have been mere phantoms seen in voluptuous dreams, in tangible reality?
Unfortunately Oswald spared him much of the trouble. He was at that time unhappier and less self-reliant than he had ever been before.
Berger's doctrine of contempt was a bad seed, which had fallen upon soil only too fertile. And since Oswald thought he had been betrayed by Melitta, he had, in order to be able the more readily to betray her himself, irrevocably lost the better part of his self-respect. It did not avail him that he charged all the blame of the rupture with Melitta upon her, that he called her a heartless coquette, who had betrayed him disgracefully, and who now laughed at the poor victim (how many were there in all?) in the arms of her lover. There was a voice continually whispering to him, which he could not silence, and which repeated again and again: You lie, you lie; a woman with such deep, loving eyes is not heartless; a woman capable of such love is not a coquette; a woman with such n.o.ble thoughts and feelings does not betray the man whose happiness she knows is in herself alone.
But even his love for Helen was but a faint reflex of that heavenly, pure flame which had lighted up his heart like the moon in a dark night during the time of his love for Melitta. There was in this love much of that weird, consuming fire of an eager devouring pa.s.sion which knows no holy reverence for its idol.
To all this must be added, that he felt indescribably unhappy in his position. His duties at the college were repugnant to him, when he had hardly begun them. The virtues required by the exceedingly difficult vocation of a teacher: industry, perseverance, patience, self-denial, he had practised little in his life. The close air of the cla.s.s-room, and the noise of a crowd of merry boys were a torment for his over-wrought nerves. And then his colleagues! this Rector Clemens, overflowing with a false humanity; this stiff, wooden Professor Snellius; this Doctor Kubel, combining easy comfort with so-called wit; these lions of learning, Winimer and Broadfoot. Gulliver meeting, on his famous travels, with the man-like, and therefore awfully hideous Yahoos, could not feel a greater aversion for them than Oswald did for those people with whom his position brought him in daily contact. And these Yahoos were exceedingly obliging and familiar; they seemed to have no suspicion of their ugliness; they overwhelmed the new comer with all possible kindnesses; they invited him again and again to evenings at whist, and evenings at tenpins, aesthetic teas, and dramatic readings! They did not seem to mind at all his reserve, his chilling coldness; on the contrary, they saw in it the awkwardness of a young man who has not moved much in good company, and must be encouraged.
Even the ladies seemed to be full of this notion, especially Mrs.
Rector Clemens, who declared openly her intention to take the shy young man, who was standing so sadly alone in the world, under her wings, and who had already begun to carry out her threat. ”I like you, dear Stein!” said the energetic lady; ”you have conquered my heart, and gained by your reading of the 'Captain' a place in our dramatic club. I consider it my duty to polish the younger colleagues. True humanity can only be acquired in intercourse with refined ladies. For what says the poet: 'If you wish to know what is becoming, ask n.o.ble ladies!' Look at our colleague, Winimer! You have no idea what a bashful, awkward man he was two years ago when he first came here, and what a charming young man I have made of him! Well, with help from above, I shall probably do as well with you.”
Oswald overlooked, of course, the natural bonhommie which prompted this and similar little speeches, and only saw the ridiculous form, at which he laughed mercilessly with Timm, whose company he sought regularly after these inflictions.
But there was in Grunwald, besides the fair manager of the dramatic club, yet another lady who thought she had an older and better right to humanize the young scapegrace, and who was the less willing to yield her part to a rival, as she had elsewhere also been mortally offended by her in her most sacred feelings.
This lady was the auth.o.r.ess of the ”Cornflowers.”
Primula still trembled whenever she thought of the terrible evening on which she had been expected to become the murderer of a great general and hero, and her only consolation was that so far from reading the part allotted her she had scarcely commenced it. But, however that might be, her hatred and her contempt for the people who had treated her with such indignity remained the same. She declared that an unexpected meeting with Mrs. Rector Clemens might have the most disastrous consequences for her health. She carried, even at first, the precaution so far that she never went out without sending her husband some twenty or thirty yards ahead, so that he could warn her in time of the probable approach of the ”Gorgon's head;” and although this extreme nervousness gradually subsided, the mere mention of her adversary's name continued still to cause her immediately great and painful emotion.
But Primula's enterprising spirit did not rest long content with such an apparently pa.s.sive resistance. Her adversary, and not she alone, but her whole kin and her whole circle, must not merely be despised in silence; they must be positively humiliated. She must be cut to the heart, or, as the poetess called it in Maenadic pa.s.sionateness, ”the flaming firebrand must be hurled upon her own hearth.” This, however, could be done in no other way than by exploding the dramatic club by establis.h.i.+ng another club in opposition, which should contain, under Primula's direction, all the intelligence of Grunwald, and eclipse the club of the schoolmasters as completely as the moon eclipses a fixed star of first magnitude. To preside over such a club at Grunwald had long been Primula's favorite dream when she was still wandering in the evening twilight by the side of the Fragmentist through the fields of Fashwitz, winding a wreath of blue cyanes for herself in sweet antic.i.p.ation of the triumphs which she was to celebrate hereafter. She had thought this dream near its fulfilment when she crossed the threshold of the reception rooms in Rector Clemens's house, her Wallenstein in her hand, and the part of Thekla word by word in her head. She had expected that evening to be the hour of her triumph. Was it not to be foreseen--or, more correctly speaking, was it not a matter of course--that as soon as she, Primula, had read the first lines, an immense storm of applause would break out; that the men would beat upon their s.h.i.+elds (or books), and men and women would exclaim as with one accord:
”Hail, thrice hail, to the proud light That makes our darkness bright!
Oh, poetess of lofty mien, Be thou hereafter our queen!
Oh, don't deny this prayer of ours, Great author of 'Cornflowers!'”
For this was the Paean which the auth.o.r.ess had herself composed for the occasion.