Villa Eden Part 210

"When you drive to Wolfsgarten again, take me with you."

Manna begged Eric to rest; but Eric saw that there was no rest for him, for he received very soon a note from Bella by a messenger, in which were these words, written in great haste,--

"You must come immediately to bear witness for me. I am ruined and disgraced."

Eric drove to Wolfsgarten. Aunt Claudine accompanied him, and Professor Einsiedel had offered his services also; but the Mother and Manna urged him to remain with them. The Professor was a consolation and a quiet support for them at the Villa. Eric promised to return that night. What can have happened at Wolfsgarten in these few hours since Clodwig's death?

They came to Wolfsgarten. The servants stood around, and looked shyly at Eric; one of them saying,--Eric heard it very distinctly,--

"Who knows whether he has not helped do it?"

The Sister of Mercy came to meet Eric, and said to him hurriedly,--

"A horrible thing has happened. The layer-out of the corpse, in removing the clothes, found a wound upon the Count's neck, and has called the coroner: now it is said that Count Clodwig was strangled.

You were present until the very last breath, you are involved in the most horrible suspicion. Inconceivable, incomprehensible! If the Doctor would only come! We have despatched messengers everywhere for him; but he is not to be found."

Bella had heard of Eric's arrival, and pulled incessantly at the bell: she desired that he would come to her. Eric requested Aunt Claudine to remain in the lower room, where the Banker was still sitting quietly, and went with the Sister of Mercy to Bella.

"Leave us alone together for a moment," begged Bella. "No, that would excite suspicion. Remain."--"Foh! suspicion!" shrieked Bella. "You men are all hypocrites. Let the world say what it will, leave us alone.

Every thing is a lie, and he was a liar too."

Eric was alone with Bella who said,--

"I have received a punishment more horrible than the most cunning Devil could ever have contrived. Herr Dournay, it is said that I, Bella Pranken, have strangled my husband,--I have sacrificed my life to be now suspected of this! Here I stand: whatever I have done, whatever I have thought, now is it a thousand-fold atoned for. And I curse it that I have been faithful. He wore the picture of another woman on his heart until his heart ceased to beat."

"The Doctor is here," was suddenly called outside.

The Doctor and Pranken entered; and the Doctor said,--

"I know the whole. This blockhead of a coroner! Every ignorant person knows that a wound on a corpse is a very different thing from one on a living body. There is only a trifling mark, a little abrasion of the skin on the Count's neck. Can't you tell me what made this?"

Bella now narrated that Robert had come to ask her whether they should leave the picture, which the Count wore on his heart, to be buried with him. She asked what sort of a picture it was, and was told that it was that of a lady. Hurrying there in her excitement, which she now lamented, she had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the corpse the picture which was hung by a small cord about the neck.

"It was the miniature of his deceased wife: here it is," said she. She pointed to a gentle face, on a thin plate of gold.

The Doctor and Eric looked at the picture, and then at Bella. Eric thought to himself, "This was why he had the bust of the Victoria brought to his bedside. Wonderful likeness!"

The Doctor said that they must not make known publicly this pa.s.sionate act of the Countess as the occasion of the coroner's mistake. He begged them to fall in with his explanation, that some of the caustic medicine which the invalid had taken had dropped down about the string, and caused this abrasion.

To his horror, Eric now recollected that Clodwig had exhorted him to take something from his bosom after he was dead. He told of this now; and the Doctor and Bella shook their heads.

The Doctor requested Bella, Eric, Pranken, the Banker, and the Sister of Mercy to go with him into the chamber of death. He had all the servants called, and rebuked the coroner sharply, pointing out to him that only the outer skin had been reddened by a caustic medicine.

Eric cast one more look at the dead body of his friend. Even the statue of the Victoria, that stood opposite, seemed to look in sorrow upon it.

The gentlemen led Bella back into her chamber. Aunt Claudine entered.

Bella extended her left hand to her, while with the right she held a handkerchief pressed to her face. The gentlemen went down to receive the King's private physician, whose carriage was just driving into the court. Doctor Richard stated in few words the cause of Clodwig's death, which was the result of a cold, together with great mental excitement.

They then all repaired to the room looking on the garden, whither Doctor Richard ordered wine to be brought, and insisted on Eric's drinking with them, as he would need to use every means to keep up his strength.

"Drink," he said, "you cannot do without it. Great demands are making upon you now, and the machine must be fed with wine."

Eric drank, but he drank a tear with the wine; for tears fell from his eyes into the gla.s.s. He left the room for a moment, and returned with a little box in which, he said, were Clodwig's orders, which his friend had commissioned him to return to the Prince. As his presence was necessary now at the Villa, he requested the court-physician to undertake the commission for him; to which he readily a.s.sented, adding, that in Clodwig a n.o.bleman had been taken away, whose memory was a source of strength to them all: the moderation and perfect balance of his nature, his repose and gentleness, were characteristics which belonged to a generation that was pa.s.sing away.

Doctor Richard, who was sitting in an arm-chair, with his legs crossed one over the other, exclaimed,--

"All that is true: the expression, 'He was too n.o.ble for this world,'

might be used with truth of him. He had the advantage, or the disadvantage, of viewing every individual thing in its connection with humanity; and, as to the thing itself, it was a matter of perfect indifference to him, whether it was done to-day or to-morrow, by you or anybody else. He might have accomplished great things, have exerted a wide-spread influence; but the task seemed to him too hard, and he excused himself from it. Every event, every experience, was made subservient to the development of his beautiful character. Good, beautiful, lofty, but a childless, barren existence is that, whose mother is a philosophy which accepts all things, comprehends all things, only to reduce them afterwards to a system. I have often reproached him with that while he lived; and I venture to do the same now that he is dead."

"He repeated to me once an expression of yours, Captain Dournay," said the Banker. "You once said to him, 'Man has to do railway duty on the earth;' and the words made a great impression on him. So it is, we all have to act more or less as guards on the swiftly-rolling train of our generation; but it is not every one who is fitted for the post."

There was much that Eric wanted to say, and he might have explained many points; for what had Clodwig not discussed with him? But he had no chance to speak; for the doctor cried,--

"I do not believe that I am inclined to find fault with this man. Of all in the wide world who will hear of his death, and mourn for him, not one respected him more than I."

Some reference was made to the horrible suspicion which had fallen upon Bella; but the Doctor repeated emphatically that this was a monstrous mistake, and heartily regretted that nothing could be done to efface all remembrance of it; for men would always hold fast to such a calumny, at least, they would not wholly forget it.

Pranken entered with a clergyman of the neighborhood, who finally consented, after much persuasion on the part of Pranken and the royal physician, to p.r.o.nounce a benediction over the body.

The Doctor presently drove off with the Court-physician: and, soon afterward, Eric also departed, with the Banker and Aunt Claudine; for Bella had requested to be left alone.

They looked back sorrowfully at the mansion, from whose summit a black flag was now waving.

For two days, Clodwig's body lay upon satin cushions in the great drawing-room, exposed to the public gaze. His countenance was peaceful.

He was surrounded by palms and flowers, and candles burned at the side of the coffin.

People from the whole country round flocked to take a last look at Clodwig; some from respect, and some from curiosity. Bella could hear them say as they left the house, "He shows no signs of having been strangled."

On the third day, Eric, the Justice, the Banker, the Major, the chief men of the city, besides an amba.s.sador from the King, and several high officers of state, followed Clodwig's body to the tomb of the Wolfsgartens.

The bells rang from mountain and valley: it was the funeral of the last of the Wolfsgartens.

Sonnenkamp had meant to make one of the funeral-procession: he had actually started for Wolfsgarten; but he was not to be seen among the mourners.

The Major said to Eric that Sonnenkamp was right not to be present: he would have attracted too much attention; and have destroyed the solemnity of the occasion.

Sonnenkamp spent the whole day in the village inn near by. He knew that, wherever he showed himself, he would excite curiosity and horror, and hid himself as well as he could, behind a large newspaper, which he pretended to be reading. He could hear the talk of the men in the public room without; and the chief speaker among them was a Jew, a cattle-dealer, who said,--

"That Herr Sonnenkamp never gave us a chance to earn any thing. Very fine of him, wonderfully fine! What ill report has not been circulated of us Jews! But we never trafficked in slaves!"

The conversation, however, soon took a different turn; and they spoke of the report of the Countess having murdered her husband, which was true, they said, for all the doctor's maintaining that the red mark about the dead man's throat was caused by a little cord on which he always wore the picture of his first wife.

A sudden light flashed into Sonnenkamp's face at hearing this charge against Bella thus insisted upon. If any thing could drive her to a decision, it was this. Bella's indignation at the suspicion must be favorable to his plans. "The chief thing," he said to himself, "will be to get her to discuss the matter: the moment she does that, she is won."

Finally, Lootz returned, whom Sonnenkamp had sent to gain intelligence of every thing that was going on.