Through Night to Light Part 38

"The lips alone, they are still red, But soon they will be pale and dead."

Helen trembled in all her limbs. She knew the singer could not look up into the lighted room; but she felt as if his eyes--his blue dreamy eyes--were resting on her. She dared not move, she hardly dared to breathe. Once more, but at a greater distance now, scarcely to be distinguished, he sang:

"The lips alone, they are still red, But soon they will be pale and dead."

Helen thought of the image in her dream, the pale crucified one, who shook his head so sadly when the priest was saying the blessing; and she thought of the dagger which had been thrust into his side up to the golden hilt, and of the drops of blood which slowly trickled down, and shuddering, she pressed, her face in her hands.

CHAPTER V.

From the moment when an accident had thrown into Albert Timm's hand that famous package of faded letters, bound up with red-silk ribbon, and long hid in the archives of Grenwitz, the lucky finder had not rested till he had found out, if not all, at least most of the threads of the secret web which he had so unexpectedly touched; then he had set to work making a good stout tissue of it. The work had not been easy.

He had been forced to use all his ingenuity and all his inventive power, and finally, when the decisive moment occurred in the interview with Felix and the baroness, all his coolness and boldness. But the venture had succeeded. The captured quarry was struggling in the meshes, and the excellent huntsman rejoiced at it. No sportsman could blame him for his joy. Now farewell to labor and trouble! Welcome, sweet leisure, which would allow him to rest after his work! Four hundred dollars a month for a whole year, and then, "after so many sorrows," a few thousand dollars extra. Albert Timm would not have been the contented redskin he was, if he had not left it with unbounded confidence to the Great Spirit to care mercifully hereafter for his red child.

Nevertheless, Albert Timm was too good a sportsman, in spite of all his modesty, not to know the old rule, that one must always have "two string's to the bow." Albert Timm had a second string to his bow, and the manner in which he had twisted this string according to all the rules of his art out of innocent sheep-sinews was so odd that the artist himself could not help laughing heartily whenever he thought of the story. Or was it perhaps not odd at all, that the man whose the booty legally was, not only never suspected it, but actually had been good-natured and stupid enough to become the intimate friend of the poacher. Not odd at all that Albert Timm, feeling the first four hundred dollars, hard-earned money, in his pocket, and sitting in the city cellar of Grunwald to drink his own health and a happy issue of all his plans, should have used the _lupus in fabula_, Mr. Oswald Stein, and thus been able to treat him with champagne and oysters, for which he paid with the very money out of which he had cheated him. He who did not think this remarkably odd or witty, as Albert Timm called it, had doubtless no eye for comical combinations, such as accident from time to time shakes together in the kaleidoscope of life.

Partly to enjoy the comedy and partly for the sake of a "second string," Albert Timm had met his old acquaintance from Grenwitz with open arms, and had even carried the fun so far as to offer to become his intimate friend. He calculated thus: It cannot be a bad speculation in any case to be the friend of this disinherited knight. If the Grenwitz keep their word and pay punctually--good; then it is a beautiful evidence of your good heart, to let part of the abundance drop into the lap of the knight who has unconsciously procured it for you. If Anna Maria (he thought he was sure of Felix) wishes to break the contract, or if an unforeseen accident relieves you of your promise, still better; then your disinterested friends.h.i.+p for the knight whose claims you then boldly advocate, gives you the strongest claim upon his grat.i.tude--in dollars.

Thus or nearly thus, the first sketch of his outline had been formed, when Albert met Stein that night in the city cellar. Since that time he had employed his leisure hours (and he had now an abundance) to fill up the sketch, and he was so much pleased with his new plan, that he was already considering whether it would not be better, after all, to overthrow the legitimate ruling dynasty, and to proclaim Oswald as the pretender. However, to act suddenly is not the manner of Indians, and to throw away muddy water before you have clear water, is folly. Albert found upon thoughtful reflection that Oswald was not quite ripe yet for the part which he meant him to play. Oswald was an enthusiast, and enthusiasts have all kinds of odd notions in their heads. For instance: "Property is theft," or "the true beggars are the true kings," and so forth. Might he not take up one of these odd notions at the very moment when he ought to have acted promptly? It is true he found Oswald greatly changed since he had seen him last. He seemed to have laid aside his dreamy sentimentality, and to be filled with a concealed restlessness, which broke forth now in extravagant merriment, and now in savage, ironical bitterness. But who can ever judge rightly of problematic characters? A remnant of the old ideology was no doubt still there, and that had first to be driven out thoroughly. Faust, just escaped from his cell, must find it impossible to return; he must be taught to relish gay life; and how could he have found a better teacher in this n.o.ble art than in the past grand master of all merry fellows, the invincible Albert Timm, whose very sight was a laughing protest against all old fogyism. And then there was a will-o'-the-wisp with which the knight, wandering helplessly in the labyrinth of his pa.s.sions, could be led far into the mora.s.s, from where there was no escape. This will-o'-the-wisp was love; his love for a certain great and rich lady, for whose sake it was well worth while to leave the straight road; a love which the knight had in the meantime confessed to his friend, and which the friend fanned in a way which would have done honor to the cleverest Marinelli. When the knight was once lured far enough to make the return impossible, when he had been turned round and round till he knew no longer where his head was, then the moment had come when he might go up to him and say: Honored knight, what will you give your Pylades if he enables you to possess all the glorious things which heretofore have been mere phantoms seen in voluptuous dreams, in tangible reality?

Unfortunately Oswald spared him much of the trouble. He was at that time unhappier and less self-reliant than he had ever been before.

Berger's doctrine of contempt was a bad seed, which had fallen upon soil only too fertile. And since Oswald thought he had been betrayed by Melitta, he had, in order to be able the more readily to betray her himself, irrevocably lost the better part of his self-respect. It did not avail him that he charged all the blame of the rupture with Melitta upon her, that he called her a heartless coquette, who had betrayed him disgracefully, and who now laughed at the poor victim (how many were there in all?) in the arms of her lover. There was a voice continually whispering to him, which he could not silence, and which repeated again and again: You lie, you lie; a woman with such deep, loving eyes is not heartless; a woman capable of such love is not a coquette; a woman with such n.o.ble thoughts and feelings does not betray the man whose happiness she knows is in herself alone.

But even his love for Helen was but a faint reflex of that heavenly, pure flame which had lighted up his heart like the moon in a dark night during the time of his love for Melitta. There was in this love much of that weird, consuming fire of an eager devouring pa.s.sion which knows no holy reverence for its idol.

To all this must be added, that he felt indescribably unhappy in his position. His duties at the college were repugnant to him, when he had hardly begun them. The virtues required by the exceedingly difficult vocation of a teacher: industry, perseverance, patience, self-denial, he had practised little in his life. The close air of the cla.s.s-room, and the noise of a crowd of merry boys were a torment for his over-wrought nerves. And then his colleagues! this Rector Clemens, overflowing with a false humanity; this stiff, wooden Professor Snellius; this Doctor Kubel, combining easy comfort with so-called wit; these lions of learning, Winimer and Broadfoot. Gulliver meeting, on his famous travels, with the man-like, and therefore awfully hideous Yahoos, could not feel a greater aversion for them than Oswald did for those people with whom his position brought him in daily contact. And these Yahoos were exceedingly obliging and familiar; they seemed to have no suspicion of their ugliness; they overwhelmed the new comer with all possible kindnesses; they invited him again and again to evenings at whist, and evenings at tenpins, aesthetic teas, and dramatic readings! They did not seem to mind at all his reserve, his chilling coldness; on the contrary, they saw in it the awkwardness of a young man who has not moved much in good company, and must be encouraged.

Even the ladies seemed to be full of this notion, especially Mrs.

Rector Clemens, who declared openly her intention to take the shy young man, who was standing so sadly alone in the world, under her wings, and who had already begun to carry out her threat. "I like you, dear Stein!" said the energetic lady; "you have conquered my heart, and gained by your reading of the 'Captain' a place in our dramatic club. I consider it my duty to polish the younger colleagues. True humanity can only be acquired in intercourse with refined ladies. For what says the poet: 'If you wish to know what is becoming, ask n.o.ble ladies!' Look at our colleague, Winimer! You have no idea what a bashful, awkward man he was two years ago when he first came here, and what a charming young man I have made of him! Well, with help from above, I shall probably do as well with you."

Oswald overlooked, of course, the natural bonhommie which prompted this and similar little speeches, and only saw the ridiculous form, at which he laughed mercilessly with Timm, whose company he sought regularly after these inflictions.

But there was in Grunwald, besides the fair manager of the dramatic club, yet another lady who thought she had an older and better right to humanize the young scapegrace, and who was the less willing to yield her part to a rival, as she had elsewhere also been mortally offended by her in her most sacred feelings.

This lady was the auth.o.r.ess of the "Cornflowers."

Primula still trembled whenever she thought of the terrible evening on which she had been expected to become the murderer of a great general and hero, and her only consolation was that so far from reading the part allotted her she had scarcely commenced it. But, however that might be, her hatred and her contempt for the people who had treated her with such indignity remained the same. She declared that an unexpected meeting with Mrs. Rector Clemens might have the most disastrous consequences for her health. She carried, even at first, the precaution so far that she never went out without sending her husband some twenty or thirty yards ahead, so that he could warn her in time of the probable approach of the "Gorgon's head;" and although this extreme nervousness gradually subsided, the mere mention of her adversary's name continued still to cause her immediately great and painful emotion.

But Primula's enterprising spirit did not rest long content with such an apparently pa.s.sive resistance. Her adversary, and not she alone, but her whole kin and her whole circle, must not merely be despised in silence; they must be positively humiliated. She must be cut to the heart, or, as the poetess called it in Maenadic pa.s.sionateness, "the flaming firebrand must be hurled upon her own hearth." This, however, could be done in no other way than by exploding the dramatic club by establis.h.i.+ng another club in opposition, which should contain, under Primula's direction, all the intelligence of Grunwald, and eclipse the club of the schoolmasters as completely as the moon eclipses a fixed star of first magnitude. To preside over such a club at Grunwald had long been Primula's favorite dream when she was still wandering in the evening twilight by the side of the Fragmentist through the fields of Fashwitz, winding a wreath of blue cyanes for herself in sweet antic.i.p.ation of the triumphs which she was to celebrate hereafter. She had thought this dream near its fulfilment when she crossed the threshold of the reception rooms in Rector Clemens's house, her Wallenstein in her hand, and the part of Thekla word by word in her head. She had expected that evening to be the hour of her triumph. Was it not to be foreseen--or, more correctly speaking, was it not a matter of course--that as soon as she, Primula, had read the first lines, an immense storm of applause would break out; that the men would beat upon their s.h.i.+elds (or books), and men and women would exclaim as with one accord:

"Hail, thrice hail, to the proud light That makes our darkness bright!

Oh, poetess of lofty mien, Be thou hereafter our queen!

Oh, don't deny this prayer of ours, Great author of 'Cornflowers!'"

For this was the Paean which the auth.o.r.ess had herself composed for the occasion.

Now she saw clearly that she had chosen the wrong road. The scales had fallen from her eyes. What had she, the thoughtful weaver of cornflower-wreaths, to do with the conflict of tragic pa.s.sions; she, the poetess of the famous Ode to the Mole that she found dead by the wayside, and to the May-bug that lay on its back, in a _dramatic_ club?

A lyric club it ought to be; and to establish such a lyric club in open and explicit opposition to the dramatic club at Rector Clemens's house was the thought which, as the poetess sang in her own words, "was rus.h.i.+ng through her soul like a mighty tempest in spring, calling forth a thousand germs irresistibly, and yet overthrowing everything in its path." Who could resist such inspiration?

Surely not the author of the Fragments, who was filled with like ambition, and whose vanity had been most deeply offended by the conduct of the pedagogues. He became the first pupil of the prophetess.

But a prophetess and one pupil make no congregation; and husband and wife, however clever they my be, do not make a club when they sit at the tea-table. The first condition of their success was, therefore, that prophetess and pupil should go forth as fishers of men; that is to say, of members of the new club. The task was not so easy. Professor Jager knew comparatively little of Grunwald society, which he had only seen at a distance when he was a poor student there. His wife, on the other hand, a native of the town, the seventh daughter of Superintendent Doctor Darkling, knew of course the society well; but the society knew her also as a bugbear of fright and disgust, on account of her eccentricities, long before Jager, then a candidate for holy orders, had courted her, and at last upon his appointment to the curacy of Fashwitz had carried her home under his lowly roof. Although the prophetess, therefore, stood at the sh.o.r.e and cast out her nets day after day, and from morning till night, she had as yet caught but few fish. This would have been extremely painful for a sensitive poetess if her favorite Oswald had not been among the few captives.

His conduct on that evening had won him Primula's heart, a large slice of which he possessed already before, and to a certain degree also the heart of the Fragmentist. Both had urgently requested him not to forget the "hospitable friends of Argos in the plains of the Scamander," and Oswald had accepted the invitation in a fit of malicious curiosity. He had vied during the visit with the professor and the professor's wife in sarcasm against the pedagogues and their wives, and had at last, when Primula revealed to him her plan of a club, entered into her views with the greatest enthusiasm. He had promised to interest the surveyor, Mr. Albert Timm, whom everybody in Grunwald knew as a very clever man, for the plan, and the poetess had in reward for such a happy thought embraced him before the eyes of her husband.

Since that visit not a day had elapsed on which a poetical epistle written by Primula had not reached Oswald. She inquired anxiously after the success of his efforts--little notes which Oswald carefully kept, and then read at night, of course without mentioning names, in the city cellar before the "Rats' Nest." This was the name of a secret society which held every evening its sessions in the above-mentioned rooms, and to which Oswald had the honor to belong as honorary member. His reading invariably provoked a Homeric laughter on the part of the a.s.sembled rats.

It was the day after the party at the Grenwitz house, when the professor's servant Lebrecht brought him once more one of these poetical inquiries, written on pink paper. This time, however, it seemed to be of special importance, for Lebrecht, a pale young man of fifteen years, who had been a charity boy a few months before, and still looked more than half-starved, remained standing near the door and said, with his hollow, orphan-house voice, "An answer is requested." Upon the envelope, also, in one of the corners, the letters A. a. i. r. were written daintily, surrounded by a wreath of forget-me-nots. The note was of course in verses, and ran thus:

TO A YOUNG EAGLE FLYING THROUGH THE CLOUDS.

The proud young eagle, Why does he stay so far, Amid gray crows and rooks, He my life's only star?

Oh, how I love to see The dark-brown eagle's hair, On your dear n.o.ble head, With the blue eyes fair.

Know not what was done!

Oh glorious conquest!

When in thy eyes I looked, Was lost fore'er my rest.

But to the stars he soars, He prizes naught below, That I, poor Primula, Am naught to him, I know!

Oswald read the verses twice and a third time without understanding what answer could be expected to such nonsense, until he discovered far down in the corner a microscopic "_tournez s'il vous plait_. He turned the leaf over, and there, on the other side, he read:

"Dear O.: I must needs descend to prose. I was yesterday in most n.o.ble company, about whom I can tell you much if you will listen. This evening a lady is coming to see me (a member of the same society) who has very distinctly intimated her desire to meet you at my house, and who has something to communicate to you which may possibly be decisive for your future happiness. It is true I should be deeply grieved to lose you, but my friends.h.i.+p for the young eagle (see page 1) is as pure as the element which he beats with his mighty wings. Will you call at seven o'clock on

"Your servant, Primula."

A joyful fear fell upon Oswald. Who else could this be but Helen? It is true the step was a bold one, but what is it that love does not dare?

He threw with rapid pen a few lines on the paper and gave it to Lebrecht, with the direction to be sure and not to lose the note, an admonition which seemed to be but too well justified by the exceedingly stupid appearance of the orphan boy.

The hours which had to pa.s.s till the evening came seemed to him to creep slowly. Misfortune would have it, besides, that he had to give two lessons that afternoon, and to an upper cla.s.s, where the pupils disliked him particularly on account of his partiality. There was no lack, therefore, of annoyances and tricks, especially as their young teacher seemed to be in worse humor than usually, and Oswald allowed himself to be carried away by his pa.s.sionate anger--a scene which restored quiet in the frightened cla.s.s, but which caused him greater annoyance than anything else.

Wrath and disgust in his heart, he left the college. Not far from there he met Franz. No meeting could have been more inconvenient to him just then. He had cultivated the friends.h.i.+p of this excellent man very little; he had hardly been two or three times at Doctor Roban's house, and generally with a hope of not finding Franz there. He knew that such conduct towards a man to whom he was deeply indebted laid him open to the charge of gross ingrat.i.tude, but he preferred that to the sense of humiliation which he always felt when the grave eyes of his friend were resting upon him.

"How are you, Oswald?" said Franz, crossing over from the other side of the street and cordially shaking hands with him. "You must be desperately busy that we see so little of you."

"Not exactly," replied Oswald; "but what little I have to do is all the more disagreeable."