Part 73 (1/2)
”It is not that alone, though that is bad enough,” sobbed Anna Maria; ”but we also are threatened with a similar exposure,” and under the pressure of a moment, yielding to the natural impulse of all helpless sufferers to cling to others at any hazard, she told Helen in a few words all about Oswald's claims on her fortune, and that if these claims should be legally established she and her daughter alike would be beggars.
Helen had listened to her in breathless excitement. Her color came and went continually, her eyes were fixed on her mother, her hand held her mother's hands with a firm grasp.
”Beggars! you say? Better so and a clear conscience than in abundance and fainting with anxiety! Come, mamma, I am not afraid of poverty! You have often told me how poor you were before you were married to papa.
Why should I be better off? I do not see that being rich has made you happy, or papa; he told me so in his last hour. I have seen it with my own eyes how much happier people are who have nothing but their affection, who rely on nothing but their own strength. I have strength; I can and will work for you, if it must be so. But now let us go away from here. You are sick and weary; your hand is icy cold, and your forehead is burning; stay, do not get up. I will pack your things; you need not trouble yourself; I shall be down in five minutes.”
”No,” said the baroness, ”let me do that. Mary can help me. You can do something else for me. We cannot well leave without writing a few words of farewell to the princess, as she is too unwell to see us, and we are in such a hurry. Sit down and write a few lines, kindly and politely, but neither more nor less than what is indispensable.”
”I will do so,” said Helen, sitting down at her escritoire, while her mother went into the adjoining room.
Helen had just taken up her pen when she heard a noise behind her which made her look up. In the middle of the room stood Oswald, deadly pale, his large eyes, brilliant with fever, fixed upon her. Helen was so terrified that she could not speak nor move. She thought for a moment it was an apparition.
Oswald seemed to guess so.
”It is really I!” he said. ”Pardon me for my abrupt appearance. I asked for the baroness; they showed me in here.”
”I will call my mother,” said Helen, rising.
”I pray, stay,” said Oswald; ”I pray you! I have only two words to say.
I would rather say them to you than to the baroness.”
There was something so solemn in Oswald's manner and tone of voice that Helen had not the heart to refuse his request.
”Will you sit down?” she said, sinking herself into a chair and pointing at another chair near her.
Oswald sat down.
”I do not know, Miss Helen, if your mother has spoken to you of certain intrigues by which she has been troubled of late, and which originate mainly with a certain Mr. Timm?”
”I have just this morning heard of it for the first time.”
”That was my own fate. And this is what brings me here. I cannot bear the thought; I believe I could not die quietly if I thought that you believed me capable of employing such vile means against you. Will you please tell the baroness so?”
”I will.”
”And tell her also, I pray, and believe yourself, how bitterly I regret that you have been troubled with such a matter.”
”It was nothing but an invention of Mr. Timm!”
”No, Miss Helen!” said Oswald, with a sorrowful smile. ”I presume it is more than that. I am only too much afraid it is the real truth, and that is the second reason why you see me here.”
”You surely do not imagine we would refuse to acknowledge legitimate claims against us?”
”That case will never arise. I have no desire to make such claims. I should never have done so, under any circ.u.mstances; and least of all now.”
He cast a look around him. The splendor of the apartment reminded him forcibly in whose house he was.
”Least of all now!” he repeated. ”Here are the papers which prove this most unfortunate of all stories. I desire the baroness to take them and to keep them, so as to be secure at all times against that man's machinations.”