Through Night to Light Part 61

It shone forth at night by means of a blood-red lamp, which looked up and down the street invitingly until the sun came and extinguished it.

During all these hours it seemed to be irresistibly attractive to many people; at least it was almost always crowded with customers. Thus it was on this evening also. There was scarcely a vacant chair in the four or five large rooms which formed the "Dismal Hole." Eliza, Bertha, and Pauline, the three pretty waiters, had their hands full in bringing the beer to each thirsty guest, and in giving him time to pinch their cheeks, or at least to say a civil word. These confidential interviews, short as they were, no doubt interfered somewhat with business, but what could be done? Thirsty gentlemen, belonging to a certain cla.s.s of society, insist upon holding the pretty hand that brings them the mug of beer, though it may be slightly moistened with foam, a little while in their own; and in this case such a desire was all the more justifiable, as the three girls were really very pretty, and did all honor to the good taste of the landlady of the "Dismal Hole."

Mrs. Rosalie Pape was a lady of fifty or more, who struck you at first sight by her enormous size. It was only after more careful examination that you noticed the coa.r.s.eness of the features, which were half hid in fat, and the short and square fingers of the plump white hands; and only the experienced observer could discover that the brown hair which adorned abundantly the head of the matron could not possibly be her own, and that the small, bright blue eyes, in spite of the apparent kindliness of the broad mouth, had a sharp and at times even a downright wicked and dangerous expression.

The guests at the "Dismal Hole," however, were not the men to make such observations. In their eyes Rosalie was a charming, splendid woman, under whose management the fame of the place was spreading far and near, and they were delighted when the good lady left her place behind the bar and made a tour through the whole bas.e.m.e.nt. Here she would familiarly clap an acquaintance on the shoulder, or welcome a newcomer; there she would graciously accept the praise of her beer, or try to disarm a critic by putting his gla.s.s to her own lips and taking a pull of which a sergeant need not have been ashamed.

Thus she had just now approached two men who were sitting alone in a corner, and putting their heads close together whispered so eagerly that it was evident the topic of their conversation must have been of the greatest importance.

"Well, little Schmenckel, how do?" said Mrs. Rosalie, putting her fat hand upon the broad shoulders of the strong gentleman in the velvet coat; "it seems to me you look rather warm. Do not drink too much, or you will not be able to show off well afterwards. You have a large audience to-night."

"I fear I wont be able to do much to-night," said the director, with stammering tongue, his face flushed and almost painfully.

"But, Schmenckel, you promised!" replied Mrs. Rose, and her eyes did not look very kindly at him. "One good turn deserves another, you know."

"My friend Schmenckel will consider it," said the other gentleman, a man with light hair, and wearing spectacles over his sharp blue eyes; "he happens just now to be somewhat excited by an encounter he had an hour ago Under the Lindens. However, I am particularly delighted, madame, to have found out your new address through Mr. Schmenckel. I had been looking for you all over town for two days, and all in vain."

Mrs. Rose Pape cast a glance at the speaker. There was something in his whole appearance, and in his way of speaking, which attracted her.

"With whom have I the honor?" she said.

"All on my side! Will you favor us with your company for a few moments?" said the young man, offering Mrs. Rosalie the third yet vacant chair near the little table. "My name is Albert Timm, from Grunwald. I have a letter of introduction to you from an old friend, who sends his kindest regards. May I be permitted to place the doc.u.ment in those beautiful hands?" And Mr. Timm handed the lady an unsealed letter, which he had drawn from a very shabby pocket-book.

Mrs. Rosalie seemed to be a little embarra.s.sed by this communication.

She cast one more searching glance at the stranger, looked all around the room to see that she was un.o.bserved, opened the note, turned ralf-round to get the benefit of the gas-light, and read:

"Dear Rose: The bearer is a very good friend of mine, whom you can trust _unconditionally_. He will tell you something about that matter at Grenwitz that will make you open your eyes wide. If you and Jeremiah will help him, we can, I am sure, help a certain gentleman to his inheritance, and make a prodigious profit out of it ourselves. Good-by!

I hope you are well; and I hope the same of your still warmly attached T. G."

"You know the hand-writing?" asked Mr. Timm of the good lady, who, after reading the letter twice, and folding it up carefully to put it in her pocket, had been looking at him for some time with suspicious glances.

"It seems to me the hand-writing is familiar," she said.

"Well, for the present that is the main point. As for the rest, I will tell you more at the proper time. I hope you will grant me, to-night, the favor and the honor of a confidential talk. I am sure we shall be the best friends in the world by to-morrow."

There was a confidence and self-a.s.surance in the manner of the young man which decidedly imposed on Mrs. Rosalie, however nicer people might have been shocked by the air of vulgar impertinence with which it was flavored. She returned the familiar pressure of Timm's hand and rose, as just at that moment one of the three Hebes came to say that she was wanted at the bar.

Mr. Timm turned once more to Director Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, who was so drunk or so absorbed in his thoughts that he had paid little or no attention to the conversation between his friend and Mrs.

Rosalie, and then he said:

"I don't see how you can be doubtful a moment. I tell you, as you were thus facing each other I was struck by the likeness, although I had little leisure at that time to make observations. I grant the accident is marvellous which has brought you together once more after so many years, at an hour and at a place where you perhaps least expected ever to meet. But what does that amount to? I have a great respect for Master Accident, for he has helped me over and over again out of many a predicament when all cleverness and wisdom were at fault. And this accident is too famous not to be something more than a mere accident.

And what is the great wonder, after all? You court, twenty-two years ago, a frivolous lady, and you succeed. When the husband returns, and finds you under suspicious circ.u.mstances, you pitch him out of the window. The lady never has had but one child, and the age of that child agrees to the day. You were in St. Petersburg, you tell me, in September, eighteen hundred and twenty-five, and the prince was born in May, twenty-six ----"

"How do you know all that?" asked Mr. Schmenckel, and shook his head incredulously.

"I tell you, my man, I know it! That is enough for you. And suppose the fellow is not your son, then----"

"But why shouldn't he be my son?" cried Mr. Schmenckel, striking the table with his gigantic hand "Do I look as if I was not up to having children?"

Mr. Timm took off his spectacles, wiped the gla.s.ses carefully, put them on again, looked laughingly at Director Caspar Schmenckel's flushed face, and said good-naturedly:

"Look here, old man, you are a funny old creature. First, I talk till I lose my breath to prove to you that you are the father of this hopeful youth; and then, when I merely a.s.sume it might not be so, you become disagreeable, and look as if you were going to beat me. I only meant to say this: Suppose the man is not your son, then, that also does not matter much. We can only try. We can ask if the princess remembers a certain evening at St. Petersburg, and so forth, and so forth. I'll wager my head against an empty pumpkin we frighten her out of her wits, and the roubles come tumbling down into our lap."

"But wont they hand us over to the police?" asked Mr. Schmenckel, shaking his head thoughtfully.

"Pshaw! They will be glad if no one else hears of it. There is no better ally for people like us than a bad conscience. I tell you I have some experience in that department."

Mr. Schmenckel reflected so deeply on the grave matter that, what with the mental effort, and perhaps also with too much beer, his head began to glow. Suddenly a thought occurred to him which might throw some light, if not upon the matter itself, at least upon the character of his new friend.

"But," he said, "what, after all, is the whole story to you?"

"Fie, director," replied Timm, with great indignation "I should not have expected such a question from you. Did you not save me from the paws of the soldiers! Does not one hand wash the other? Is there no such thing in the world as grat.i.tude? If you insist absolutely upon being a poor devil for the rest of your life instead of living in your own house with an annuity of a few thousand roubles, and of driving your own carriage, I have nothing to say to it! I beg your pardon for having troubled you with all these things. Come, let us talk of something else!"

"Now, come, don't fly off at such a pace!" cried Mr. Schmenckel, anxiously. "I don't dream of taking anything amiss, especially if you want to make me the father of a live prince. But that I should have such a grand son, and that I should have whipped him so unmercifully the very first time I ever set eyes on him, that is surely amazing enough. If Caspar Schmenckel were to tell anybody else so he would not be believed."

"I do not see," said Timm, "why that is any more amazing than that I must be the only one of the thousands in the park to run right into the arms of the prince; that I alone happen to know him from former times; that I remember his name, mention it to you, and thus call up in your mind a remembrance which helps us to make this important discovery. I can a.s.sure you I was at first quite as much amazed as you are; but such things, thank G.o.d, do not last long with me."

Mr. Timm threw himself back in his chair and picked his teeth. Mr.

Schmenckel looked with infinite astonishment, not unmixed with fear, at the man whom even such an extraordinary event could not move from habitual coolness. Mr. Schmenckel was not the man to reflect deeply on the relations in which he stood to this man; but still, he had an indistinct feeling about it. As he was looking at him thus, he felt a decided inclination to give the young man a hearty drubbing, or to punish him in some other way for his superiority, as an elephant sometimes may dream of the pleasure he would enjoy if he could hurl his Carnac on the ground and trample upon him with his feet for a few minutes.

It was a few hours later. Only a few guests had remained in the "Dismal Hole," where they had had very lively times--the excitement was intense everywhere; beer was drunk by the cask, and speeches were made without number and without end. They sat scattered about, in groups of three and four persons, mostly people of rather peculiar appearance, such as are only seen in large cities, and there also rarely or never in the day-time and on the streets. Men in shabby, often fantastic costumes, with dissipated and yet attractive features, and with eyes which now blazed up in wild pa.s.sion, and now gloated stolidly on vacancy--strange figures, who tell the knowing eye without opening their lips long stories of proud plans and childish deeds, of great talents and still greater recklessness, of lofty pride and low disgrace, of senseless dissipation and gnawing hunger, of incredible efforts condemned to end like the labors of Sisyphus, and of an ambition leading only to the sufferings of Tantalus, until efforts and ambition and every virtue, nay, every good instinct, is drowned in the mora.s.s of apathetic indifference.

But these groups also gradually disappeared; one light after another was put out by the poor girls, who had for the last hour been nodding here and there in the corners, their pretty faces buried in their round arms; and at last there was n.o.body left but Mr. Schmenckel, who was asleep, drunk, on one of the sofas, and two other gentlemen who were sitting with the landlady around one of the small tables over a bottle of champagne. One of these men was Albert Timm, from Grunwald; the other was a man of middle age, who had only come about an hour ago, and whom Mrs. Rose had introduced to Mr. Timm as the brother of his landlord in Grunwald, Mr. Jeremiah Goodheart. From his clothes and his whole general appearance he might have been taken for a modest citizen in tolerably good circ.u.mstances; a grocer, perhaps, or a tobacco dealer; but in his small eyes, overshadowed by heavy eyebrows, there was something that seemed to indicate that the occupation of the man was not quite so harmless, or at least had not always been quite so harmless.

The three persons had been conversing very eagerly, and Mr. Timm now summed up what had been said.

"Then there are two questions," he said. "First we must get a peep at the baptismal register at St. Mary's; or, better still, obtain a certified copy of the entry; and, secondly, we must find the princ.i.p.al personage in this comedy--I mean Mr. Oswald Stein."

"But how do you know he is to be here?" asked the man with the odd eyes.

"I do not know it; I only presume so. He wrote me a week ago from Paris that he could not support himself any longer there, and that he must try to reach home before his money was at an end. It seems to me, beyond all doubt, that he must have come here, where he had had literary engagements when he was a student here, and where he has therefore the best prospect of finding some means of support for himself and his sweet one. Only I think he will not appear under his true name, so as not to expose himself to disagreeable encounters with the relations of the Baroness Cloten, who, I know, are still after him, and would very soon find him out here. This might therefore be the more difficult task of the two, unless accident, my faithful old ally, should again come to my a.s.sistance."

"That item you may quietly leave in the hands of my friend here," said Mrs. Rosalie, familiarly placing her hand on the head of the man with the odd eyes; "and now, gentlemen, I believe it is time we should part.

Tomorrow is another day. Yes; but what shall we do with the big fellow there on the sofa, who has been drinking for twelve to-day?"

"We shall have to carry him home, if you, fair lady, have not perhaps a snug little place for him somewhere," replied Mr. Timm, with a look full of meaning.

"You scamp!" said the lady, pinching Mr. Timm's cheeks. "I will have to stop you."

"I hope so--with a kiss."

"You scamp, you!" said the lady, evidently not unwilling to try the experiment.

Mr. Timm seemed to be afraid of it, for he suddenly turned to Mr.

Schmenckel and began to shake him, first gently, then more vigorously, and at last as hard as he could.

"Uff!" groaned the giant, half asleep yet; "let me go, I'll manage the boy."

"What will he do?" asked the man with the odd eyes.