Hammer and Anvil Part 90

no, no, it cannot be!"

She had sprung from her chair.

"Where are you going?" I asked, seizing her hand.

She tore herself loose and rushed from the room.

I remained, hesitating what to do; I feared for a moment she was going to kill herself; and then I heard her coming back, not alone.

She re-entered, dragging after her the decrepit form of an old woman, whom under other circ.u.mstances I should have taken for a housekeeper or something of the sort, and in whom I recognized, with a shudder of disgust, old Pahlen.

How this horrible creature, after her escape from prison, found her way to her mistress, I never learned; but the closer the relations that had existed, as mistress and servant, between them, the fiercer was the rupture, and more frightful the reckoning.

"Here! here!" cried Constance, dragging the woman almost to my feet, "here she is! George. I adjure you by heaven and all that is holy, kill this monster who would have plunged me into horrible crime."

Constance's words, her pa.s.sion, my presence, all combined overwhelmed the wicked woman. I saw in her old wrinkled face, in the sidelong look of her evil eyes, that she knew her guilt; and Constance saw it as well as I; for as the creature with faltering words tried to frame some excuse, she cut her short with a cry of rage, almost a yell, that long after sounded in my ears; "Begone! out of my sight! wretch! monster!"

The wretch was no doubt glad of the chance of escape for which her sidelong eyes had been searching before, and rushed out of the door. I never saw her again, and know not how long afterwards she dragged out her wretched existence, nor when and how it ended.

Constance was pacing up and down the room, with a face which showed her entire conviction of the truth, and wringing her hands in anguish.

Suddenly she threw herself upon her knees in a corner of the room, and seemed to pour forth her heart in agonized prayer. I observed that where she knelt a small ivory crucifix was attached to the wall, and that from time to time she separated her hands to make the sign of the Cross, and then clasped them again in fervent prayer. Later I learned, by chance, that Constance, when in Italy, had returned to the Catholic church, the faith of her mother. Whatever spiritual peace she may have afterwards found, after confession and long penance, as the abbess of a Roman convent, at this moment her prayers seemed to be unavailing. She arose from the crucifix only to fall at my feet, to clasp my knees, and to beg me to avert the frightful consequences of what she had done. I raised her, saying that I had already done all that was in my power, and that I had come to her to learn if she could do nothing.

"There is but one means," she said; "and that is to prevail if possible upon Herr Lenz to quit the field--to leave here immediately."

"How can we do that? The man is evidently your tool, the tool of your revenge; and it is no longer in your control--or do you think it is?"

"It may be, it may be," she said, in a low hurried tone. "He knows that I do not love him; he knows about Carl, and that has made him furious; but I know that he loves me, and that for the prize of my hand, which I have always refused him, he would consent to anything--to anything! Am I not fair enough, George, for a man to consent to anything for my sake?"

She threw back with trembling hands the dark l.u.s.trous ma.s.ses of hair from either side of her face, and smiled upon me. I have only once in my life seen such a face, and that was when, in the Glyptothek at Munich, I saw the Rondanini Medusa, and then the world-celebrated mask seemed to me but a weak copy.

"Come!" I said. She was about to start just as she was: I wrapped her in a cloak of furs which she had probably worn from the theatre, and which was lying on the floor. We left the house and drove to the lodging of Herr von Sommer. The house was closed. Some minutes pa.s.sed before our repeated knocking brought the porter to the door.

"Herr von Sommer set out half an hour ago."

"Do you know where he was going?"

"He did not say, further than that he would not be back for several days."

"Is no one in the house that can give further information?"

"Hardly: he took his own servant with him."

"You have no idea where he was going?"

"None. He went in a _droschky_."

I saw that nothing more was to be got out of the man, who stood shivering in his sheepskin cloak; and in fact he cut short the interview by shutting the door with a muttered oath.

Constance who had followed me, had heard all.

"Perhaps we can learn from _him_."

We drove to the palace of the prince. Our progress was slow; a furious gale was blowing, and the wretched horse could scarcely drag the coach through the snow-drifts. I fancied that our own slow journey was an emblem of repentance, which toils painfully after the evil deed that it can never overtake.

At last we reached the palace. As we got out, I cast an involuntary look towards the sky. From a clear s.p.a.ce, the blackness of which contrasted with the white clouds that were driving with arrowy speed across the sky, looked down upon us the calm eternal stars. The words of Constance's favorite song came into my mind:

"All day long the bright sun loves me, Woos me with his glowing light; But I better love the gentle Stars of night."

Alas, this starry love had guided her far astray--had brought her at last _here_, in this fearful night, to the house where the sister was knocking at the door of her brother whom she had involved in the web of death.

The palace was dark; only the two lamps on either side the great entrance were burning, and their golden light, in which the snow flakes were once more fluttering down, shone dimly, as it had done a year before at the unhappy meeting between us two at this very spot.

I rang the bell: I heard its hollow clamor dully reverberating in the hall of stone, as in a great sepulchral vault. No one came. At last after minutes of agonizing expectation, the door was opened: a man in his shirt-sleeves, with a light in his hand, stood before me. The fellow's face was flushed with drinking and his eyes gla.s.sy; it was evident that in the servants' hall the master's absence had been turned to good account. He was about to close the door in my face, but I set my foot against it and pushed in. The man then recognized me, having seen me at the palace twice already to-day, and probably before at Rossow. He answered my questions with disagreeable servility. His highness had driven out half an hour before with the count; not in his own carriage, but in a hired _droschky_ taken from the stand. He did not know where his highness had gone; his highness often went out in a _droschky_. He would certainly not be back until very late, if he came back at all to-night. He, for his part, had leave to go to bed.

It was evident that it was high time the fellow was making use of this permission, for he tottered with sleep while he stammered out these words. It was the same report that I had received at the other house: both parties had already left the city, to go heaven only knew where: somewhere where their meeting might be undisturbed. I said to Constance that we could do no more.

"I will go home and pray," she said.

Was it a reminiscence from the tragedy in which she had been playing?

Was it really for her the close of the tragedy of her life? She spoke no word further as we went home, except that once she said:

"I have at least helped you to your happiness."

I do not know what she meant.

CHAPTER XXV.

When I reached home it was one o'clock--a fact which I could scarcely comprehend. It seemed to me as if not hours but weeks had elapsed since I parted from Hermine. I went on tip-toe to her room and bent over her bed, where she lay sleeping, one arm beneath her head, like a slumbering child. And like that of a child was the expression of her face, as though a happy dream were pa.s.sing through her spirit. It seemed to me like a crime to sit watching, with a world of sorrow and anguish in my soul, by the side of this blessed peace; and yet slumber was impossible to me. So I put the shade before the night-lamp again, and went to my own bed-chamber where I had already lighted a lamp.

In the dim light of this lamp which only made a few objects in the room visible while the rest were plunged in darkness, I sat for hours before the hearth in which the last spark had long died out from the ashes, revolving in my breast thoughts indescribably painful. In vain did I endeavor to recall my old cheerful courage; it seemed to have died out, like the embers in the ashes before me, which had once glowed as brightly and sparkled as cheerfully: in vain did I try to bring to my memory all the goodness and kindness that life had brought me hitherto, and in which it still was rich; nothing would appear to me in the old light: all was empty, gray, and dead, as though the world were but a scene of devastation and decay, and I were wandering comfortless and alone, among the ruins of splendors long pa.s.sed away.

A reaction from my excessive excitement must have overcome me at last.

I dreamed that there was a gray twilight that was neither night nor day. I was wandering alone upon the bleak ridge of the promontory at Zehrendorf, and a bitter piercing wind was blowing from the sea. All was waste and desolate, and there was nothing to be seen but the ruin of the old Zehrenburg, which rose dumb and defiant in the twilight. But when I looked at it, it was not the old castle, but a gigantic statue of stone, which was the Wild Zehren looking with dull glazed eyes towards the west, where his sun had set forever in the eternal sea. And though no light illuminated the gray twilight, a bright glitter flashed from a golden chain which was on the neck of the stone giant who was the Wild Zehren, and spurs of gold gleamed upon his feet of stone, and brightly flashed the bare blade of the broad knight's sword which lay across his knees of stone. And as, full of inward terror, I watched the statue, a small figure came through the tall broom and drew near the stone giant, which it crept lurkingly around, and watched from all sides. And the queer small figure was the commerzienrath, and he made the oddest faces and cut the strangest capers when he found the giant was so fast asleep. Suddenly he began to clamber up the knees, then stood upon tip-toe and took the golden chain from the giant's neck and hung it around his own, then sprang down and took the sword, and lastly the golden spurs, which he buckled on. Then with ridiculous pomposity he strode backwards and forwards in the knight's accoutrements, and tried to brandish the sword, but could not lift it, while his spurs kept catching in the high broom and tripping him, and the heavy chain upon his shoulders pressed him down, so that he suddenly became a decrepit and bowed old man who could scarcely stand upon his feet, and still tried to balance himself like a rope-dancer, upon the sharp edge of the precipice where the chalk-cliff fell perpendicularly to the sea.

I strove to call to him to have a care for Hermine's sake, but I could neither speak nor move; and suddenly he fell over the cliff. I heard the heavy fall of his body upon the pebbly beach, and the giant begun to laugh, a laugh so loud, so terrible that I awakened in fright, and with wildly-beating heart looked around the room, into which, through the curtains, there fell a gray twilight which was neither night nor day, just as it had been in my dream, and I still heard the resonant peals of laughter, but they were blows with which some impatient hand was battering at the house-door. I hastened to open it myself.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"A message for Herr Hartwig, and--and--ah! you are there yourself, Herr Hartwig, I see."

It was a servant from the hotel at which for many years my father-in-law had been in the habit of stopping whenever he came to the town.

"Yes; what is the matter?"

"My master sends his respects, and--and the Herr Commerzienrath has just been found dead in his bed."