Hammer and Anvil Part 12

During the whole of this time I had scarcely left the side of Herr von Zehren. No strangers had come about the place; there had been no suspicious meetings; no goods had been received, and none sent out, except a barrel or two of wine to the neighbors. To be sure, the people on the estate looked as if they were accustomed to anything rather than honest industry, and especially my tall friend Jock could not possibly have a clear conscience; but the cotters on the various estates around were all a rough, uncouth, piratical-looking crew, as indeed many of them had been fishermen and sailors, and were so still when occasion offered. That the gang which we had seen crossing the heath did not belong to our people, I was convinced when I pa.s.sed the laborer's cottages, and saw Jock with two or three others lounging about the doors as usual.

And then, granting that Herr von Zehren was really all that evil tongues called him, still he did nothing more or worse than his neighbors. They all dabbled a little in it, Granow had said; and if all these aristocratic gentlemen made no scruple of filling their cellars with wine that they knew to be smuggled, the receiver was as bad as the thief, and Herr von Zehren was here, as always and everywhere, only the bolder man who had the courage to do what the others would willingly have done if they dared.

And, after all, I was bound to him by the firmest ties of grat.i.tude.

Should I go away for a mere suspicion, the silly gossip of a prating tongue, and abandon him who had always been so kind, so friendly to me?--who had given me his best--no, his second-best gun and dog; whose purse and cigar-case--and ah, what exquisite cigars he had!--were at all times at my service? Never! And even if he really were a smuggler, a professional smuggler--but how could I find out once for all whether he was or not?

Most simply, by going directly to himself. I had justification for doing so. My honesty was questioned by his friends; they did not know what to think of me. I could not allow this to go on unnoticed. Herr von Zehren could not expect that I should, on his account, incur the dishonoring suspicion of being either a spy or an accomplice. But suppose he were to say: "Very well; then go. I do not detain you."

I seated myself upon a stone-bench under a spreading maple at the edge of the park, and resting my elbow upon the half-fallen table, and leaning my head upon my hand, gazed at the castle which threw its shadow far over the lawn, now golden in the morning sun.

Never had the ruinous old pile seemed so dear to me. How well I knew each tall chimney, each tuft of gra.s.s growing upon the gray moss-covered roof of tiles, the three balconies, two small ones to the right and left, and in the middle the great one upon which the three gla.s.s doors opened from the upper hall, resting upon its ma.s.sive pillars with the fantastic voluted capitals. How well I knew each window, with the weather-beaten wooden shutters that were never closed, and the most of which, indeed, were past closing. Some were hanging by a single hinge, and one belonging to the third window to the right always slammed at night when the wind was from the west. I had a dozen times resolved to secure it, but always forgot it again. The two windows at the corner to the left were those of my room, my poetic room with the precious old furniture, which to my eye had such an imposing effect that I felt like a young prince in the midst of all this magnificence. What happy hours had I already pa.s.sed in this room! Early mornings, when, joyous in the antic.i.p.ation of the day's sport, I sang as I dressed myself and arranged my ammunition; late evenings when I returned home with my friend, heated with wine and play and jovial discourse, and sitting at the window, inhaled the fragrant aroma of my cigar, or drank in large draughts the pure, cool night-air, while thoughts crowded one another in my mind, foolish and sentimental thoughts, all turning to the fair maiden who doubtless had been slumbering for hours in her chamber by the terrace.

What was it that the shameless slanderer had said of her? I scarcely dared to recall his words to my mind. I could not comprehend how I could have borne to listen to them, or how it was that I let him escape unchastized after so desecrating the object of my idolatry. The miserable creature! The conceited, upstart, envious little oaf! Little blame to her that she would have nothing to do with such a lover as he, or the rest of her country squires. And for this they now breathed their venomous slanders against her: said that she would have sold herself--she, the lovely, the n.o.ble, the pure, for whom a king's throne would have been too low! Was there any head more worthy of a diadem--any form more fit to be folded in the mantle of purple? Oh, I desired nothing for myself; it was enough for me if I might touch the hem of her vesture. But the others should honor her as well as I. No one, not if he were prince or king, should dare to approach her without her permission. If she would only, as she had jestingly said that night, let me keep watch at her threshold!

Thus humbly I thought of her in my full, young heart, that was breaking with love and longing. And I did it in the most a.s.sured conviction, in the firmest faith, of the n.o.bility and purity of her I loved so dearly.

I can truly say there was no drop of blood in my veins that did not belong to her. I would have given my life for her had she asked it of me, had she taken me for the true heart that I was, had she dealt honestly with me. Was it a presentiment of the brief s.p.a.ce of time that I was still to cherish the simple faith that there is a spark of virtue in every human breast that nothing can entirely extinguish, that made me now bow my head upon my hands and shed hot tears?

I suddenly lifted my head, for I fancied I heard a rustling close behind me, and I was not mistaken. It was Constance, who came through the bushes hedging the path to the beech-wood. I sprang suddenly in confusion to my feet, and stood before her, ere I had time to wipe the traces of my tears from my cheeks.

"My good George," she said, offering me her hand with a gentle smile, "you are my true friend, are you not?"

I murmured some indistinct reply.

"Let me sit here by you a little while," she said; "I feel somewhat tired; I have been up so long. Do you know where I have been? In the forest by the tarn, and afterwards up at the ruin. Do you know that we have never again gone there together? I was thinking of it this morning, and was sorry; it is so beautiful up on the cliffs, and walking with you is so pleasant. Why do you never come there to bring me home? Don't you remember what you promised me: to be my faithful George, and kill all the dragons in my path? How many have you killed?"

She glanced at me from under her long lashes with her unfathomable brown eyes, and abashed I looked upon the ground. "Why do you not answer?" she asked. "Has my father forbidden you?"

"No," I replied, "but I do not know whether you are not mocking me. You have shown me lately so little kindness, that at last I have hardly dared to speak to you or even to look at you."

"And you really do not know why I have lately been less friendly towards you?"

"No," I answered, and added softly, "unless it be because I am so much attached to your father; and how can I be otherwise?"

Her looks darkened, "And if that were the reason," she said, "could you blame me? My father does not love me; he has given me too many proofs of that. How can any one love me who is 'so much attached to my father?'"--she spoke the last words with bitterness--"who perhaps reports to him every word that I say, and to the watchers and tale-bearers by whom I am surrounded adds another, so much the more dangerous as I should have expected from him anything but treachery."

"Treachery--treachery from me?" I exclaimed with horror.

"Yes, treachery," she answered, speaking in a lower tone, but more rapidly and pa.s.sionately. "I know that Sophie, my maid, is bribed; I know that old Christian, who skulks about, day and night, watches me like a prisoner. I am not at all sure that old Pahlen, who shows some devotion to me, would not sell me for a handful of _thalers_. Yes, I am betrayed, betrayed on all sides. Whether by you--no; I will trust your honest blue eyes, although I had really good reason for suspecting you."

I was half distracted to hear Constance speaking thus; and I implored her, I adjured her, to tell me what horrible delusion had deceived her, for that it was a delusion I was ready to prove. She should, she must tell me all.

"Well then," she said, "is it delusion or truth that on the very first evening of your stay here, by order of my father, who brought you here for that purpose, you kept watch under my window, when afterwards you pretended to me that it was my music that had attracted you?"

I started at these last words, which were accompanied with a dark suspicious look. That dark figure then had really been stealing to a rendezvous; and he had been there since, else how could she know what had happened?

"You need make no further confession," said Constance, bitterly. "You have not yet sufficiently learned your lesson of dissimulation. And I, good-natured fool, believed that you were my faithful George."

I was near weeping with grief and indignation.

"For heaven's sake," I cried, "do not condemn me without a hearing. I went into the park without any special intention; without an idea that I should meet him--any one. If I had known that the man whom I saw from this point come out of the shrubbery yonder, came with your permission, I should never have intercepted him, but would have let him go unmolested where, as it seems, he was expected."

"Who says that he came by my permission, and that he was expected?" she asked.

"Yourself," I promptly answered. "The fact that you are informed of what none but he and I could know."

Constance glanced at me, and a smile pa.s.sed across her features.

"Indeed!" she said, "how skilful we are at combinations! Who would have believed it of us? But you are mistaken. I know of it from him, that is true; but I did not expect him, nor had he my permission. More than this: I solemnly a.s.sure you that I had no idea that he was so near.

'And now?' your look seems to inquire. Now he is as far as he ever was.

He wrote to me by a medium--no matter how--that he made an attempt to see me on that evening, in order to communicate something which he did not wish me to learn from another. I answered him by the same way that I had already learned it through another, and that for the sake both of his peace and my own, I entreated him to make no attempt to approach me. This is all, nor will there ever be more. It is not my custom to ask of those that love me, to sacrifice for me their futures and their lives. And that would be the case here. That person can enter into no engagements without his father's consent, and my father has taken care that this consent shall never be given. He will only be free after his father's death. Before this happens years may pa.s.s. He shall not sacrifice those years to me."

"And he consents to this," I cried, indignantly; "he does not rather renounce his t.i.tle and inheritance than give you up? He does not rather allow himself to be torn to pieces than renounce you? And this man possesses millions, and calls himself a prince."

"You know, then, who it was?" asked Constance, apparently alarmed, adding with bitterness: "To be sure, why should you not? Of course you are my father's confidant, and told him the whole adventure at once, as in duty bound."

"I never breathed a word of it to any living creature," I answered, "nor has Herr von Zehren ever in my presence uttered the name of the prince."

"What need of the name?" she retorted. "Things can be plainly told without mentioning names. But, whatever he may have told you, he never told you that Carl is my betrothed; that our union was prevented by his fault alone; that he has ruthlessly sacrificed my happiness to a haughty caprice, to revenge himself upon the father of my betrothed at the cost of us both; and that far from offering me an at least tolerable existence in requital for the brilliant future out of which he has cheated me, makes my life a daily and hourly torment. He killed my mother, and he will kill me."

"For G.o.d's sake, do not talk in that way," I cried.

"This life is no life; it is death--worse than death," she murmured, letting her head sink upon the table.

"Then you still love him who has abandoned you?" I said.

"No," she replied, raising her head; "no! I have already told you that as it is, so it must remain. I have freely and entirely renounced him.

I am too proud to give my heart--which is all I have to give--to one who does not give me all in return. And, George, can one give more than his heart?"

I would have answered, "Then, Constance, you have my all;" but my voice failed me. I could but gaze at her with a look in which lay my whole heart--the full heart of a youth, overflowing with foolish, faithful love.

She pressed my hand, and said, "My good George, I will--yes, I must believe that you are true to me. And now that we have had our talk out, and are good friends again, let us go to the house, where old Pahlen will be expecting me to breakfast."

She had fallen at once into the tone in which we had commenced the conversation, and continued:

"Do you go shooting to-day? Are you fond of shooting? I used to go sometimes; but that is long ago--so long ago! I used to be a good rider, and now I think I could not keep my seat in the saddle. I have unlearned everything; but chiefly how to be gay. Are you always cheerful, George? I often hear you singing in the morning such charming merry songs; you have a fine voice. You should teach me your songs; I know none but sad ones."

How enchanting this prattle was to me! But as her recent unkindness had made me silent and reserved, so now the unlooked-for kindness she showed me produced the same effect. I went by her side, with a half confused, half happy smile upon my face, across the wide lawn to the house, where, on reaching her terrace, we separated, after exchanging another pressure of the hand.

In three bounds I had ascended the steep stair, flung open violently the door of my room, but stopped upon the threshold with some surprise, as I saw Herr von Zehren sitting in the great high-backed chair at the window.

He half turned his head, and said:

"You have kept me waiting long; I have been sitting here fully an hour."

This did not tend to restore my composure; from his chair one could see across the lawn directly to the seat under the maple. If Herr von Zehren had been sitting here an hour, he had certainly seen with his keen eyes much more than I could have wished. I returned his salutation with great embarra.s.sment, which certainly did not diminish when he said, with a gesture towards the seat: "Mary Stuart, George, eh? Sir Paulet the cruel jailor with the great bunch of keys? Enthusiastic Mortimer--'Life is but a moment, and death but another'--eh? Faithless Lord Leicester, who has the convenient habit of taking ship for France as soon as heads are in danger!"

He filliped the ash from his cigar, and then with one of those instantaneous changes of humor to which I had grown accustomed, began to laugh aloud, and said:

"No, my dear George, you must not turn such a look of indignation upon me. I am really your friend; and, as I said to you yesterday, it is no fault of yours, and I frankly ask you to forgive me if I yesterday for a moment made you suffer for what you are entirely innocent of. She has to play her comedies; she has done it from a child. I have indeed often feared that she gets it from her unhappy mother. Many a one has suffered from it, and I not the least; but you I would willingly save.

I have often enough warned you indirectly, and now do it plainly. What are you about?"