Through Night to Light Part 50

"Why not?"

"Did I not tell you that Marguerite is no longer with the Grenwitz people?"

"Not a word. Where is she?"

"At Privy Councillor Rohan's."

"How did she get there?"

"I believe through Bemperlein, the candidate for the university, forsooth; the hypocrite who, I am told, is now the privy councillor's right hand, and as others say engaged to my pet of other days."

"Much good may it do him!" said Toby. "But who has dunned you?"

"The old privy councillor himself; look!"--and here Albert drew from his pocket the letter he had received half an hour ago. "The old sinner writes, 'Dear sir! As Miss Marguerite, who now does me the honor,'

etc., etc., 'tells me,' etc. 'As the relations which formerly may have existed between yourself and the young lady are now entirely and forever broken off--you know best why--you will understand that you cannot, as a man of honor, keep a moment longer a sum of money which was placed at your disposal under very different circ.u.mstances.

Finally, I beg leave to say that the young lady feels a very natural inclination to leave the matter untouched, but that I learnt accidentally from members of the Grenwitz family that Miss Martin had been enabled to save a little capital while staying with that family, and that this led me to question the young lady on the subject, and to insist upon being told,' etc. 'Of course, I must consider it my duty,'

etc., etc. Well, what do you say of that?" asked Albert, crus.h.i.+ng the letter and stuffing it angrily into his pocket.

"That is a bad thing," replied the honorable Toby, scratching his grizzly head. "The privy councillor is a man of high standing in the town, especially since he has paid his debts--heaven knows how; so that you cannot enter the lists against him. I am afraid you will have to pay."

"So am I," replied Albert. "That cursed gossip, the baroness! It is malice in her; but she shall pay for it. I'll put the thumbscrews on her, till----"

Albert paused, and poured the rest of the drink down his throat.

"Look here, Albert mine," said Toby; "how are you standing with the baroness? I hope, Albert mine, my boy, you have got all the lots of money which you have made such an unusual show of, of late, in an honest way?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the baroness is not so bad yet, and----"

"Nonsense. That old vixen! I am not so low yet."

"Then tell me; how did you get the money?"

"First tell me what you mean by your mysterious allusions to the power you have over the Grenwitz family, and let me hear it all."

"Will you then tell me where the money comes from?"

"Yes."

"Well! But let us first brew another tumbler, and then we can begin our stories. But look here; honor bright, Albert mine; honor bright, and no prattling!"

"One crow does not peck at another!" said Albert.

Mr. Toby smilingly nodded his venerable head, mixed the grog with artistic care, unb.u.t.toned his black satin waistcoat, leaned back in his chair, and said,

"I have not always lived in Grunwald; and I have not always been s.e.xton at St. Bridget's."

"I know! The capital has the undisputed honor to call you her own; and whose s.e.xton you were before you became St. Bridget's own s.e.xton, the gentleman in black will probably know best."

Toby Goodheart seemed to take this as a high compliment. He smiled contentedly, and sipped his grog with evident delight.

"Don't be coa.r.s.e, Albert mine, or I cannot go on," he said. "My father was a servant; and I was, from tender infancy, intended for the same profession. You may judge what remarkable talents I had for my vocation, when I tell you that I had had twenty masters before I was twenty years old. About this time it occurred to me how much more pleasant it would be to be my own master; and as I had laid by a considerable little sum during the time of my service,"--here the honorable Toby smiled with his left eye and the left corner of his mouth--"I had capital enough to open a house of entertainment."

"Nice entertainment, I dare say, you gave," said Albert.

"Yes, indeed!" replied Toby, adding another lump of sugar to his grog; "at least the fair s.e.x was abundantly represented in my nice little business. I made it a principle to have only female waiters, and so the 'Cafe Goodheart' was well frequented. I had at least six or eight young ladies to do the honors of my house."

Albert Timm seemed to listen to these statistics with much delight. He leaned back in the corner of the sofa and broke out into a loud laugh, while the honorable Toby again only smiled--but this time, for the sake of change, with the right eye and the right corner of the mouth.

"Hush, hush, Albert mine!" he said; "the people might hear us in the street. How can a prudent youth like yourself ever laugh aloud? I have never in all my life done more than smile, and I have succeeded pretty well. But never mind that. The young ladies were, of course, always very pretty; and I can say that, of all my colleagues, I managed to get the prettiest. But I must also confess that this was not so much due to my own good taste as to the discrimination and cleverness of a lady with whom I had once upon a time stood in tender relations, when we were both in service, and who was still a friend and a partner in business. This lady, called Rose Pape, was in her way a very remarkable woman, with a marvellous talent for business."

"I can imagine what kind of business that was," said Albert.

"You can imagine no such thing, young man," replied Toby. "Mrs. Rose Pape was an excellent lady, whose society was not only sought after by the most respectable ladies, but also paid for with large sums of money, and whose night-bell was well known in the whole thickly-settled neighborhood in which she lived. But Mrs. Rose Pape took not only a warm interest in young wives, but very consistently, also, in those who might become such; and thus she had as extensive an acquaintance among the pretty chambermaids and seamstresses as among the wives of high officials and rich merchants.

"One fine day, now, Mrs. Rose came to see me, and told me that an immensely rich baron of her acquaintance had fallen desperately in love with a pretty girl, and had charged her, Rose, to help him, without regard to expense. She had already formed a plan, but she was in need of a valet of special abilities in order to carry out her superb conception. She added that there was a lot of money to be made in the business, and asked me to join her.

"It so happened that just at that time the police had found occasion to interfere with the management of my cafe, and I was afraid of unpleasant consequences; I seized, therefore, with eagerness the opportunity of leaving the capital for a time in such good company.

Twenty-four hours later I was on my way, accompanying the young lady in question, and riding in the comfortable carriage of my new master, who was going to--well, guess, Albert mine, where he was going?"

"How can I know? But you were surely not going to give me the complete history of your life? I thought you were going to tell me how you got to Grenwitz," said Albert, who had been busy with his own affairs, and had not listened very attentively.

"Why, you hear, we are on the way to Grenwitz," said Toby, glancing at Albert from the corner of his left eye across the rim of his tumbler; "for my new master was Baron Grenwitz, and the end of our journey was Castle Grenwitz, where you were last summer."

An Indian, who on his pursuit has discovered his enemy's track in the gra.s.s of the prairie, cannot exert himself more powerfully, with all his senses, than Albert did as soon as he heard the last words. He had instantly recognized in Toby Goodheart the valet who had played so ambiguous a part in the story of Mother Claus; but he did not betray by a word or gesture the importance of this discovery, but asked, with well-feigned indifference,

"The old baron? Upon my word! I should not have expected such things from the old boy!"

"Not the present baron, but his cousin, of the older line--Baron Harald; or Wild Harald, as he is still called by those who have known him. I tell you, Albert mine, it was a merry life we were leading at Castle Grenwitz in the year of the Lord eighteen hundred and twenty-two. Wine and women in abundance! and with all that we played comedy--well, it was equal to the best thing I have ever seen on the stage. Just imagine: my good friend. Rose----"

"She was there, too?"

"Certainly! Did I not tell you the baron had engaged her to play his great-aunt?"

"His what?"

Toby smiled--this time with both eyes and both corners of the mouth.

"She played the great-aunt of the baron, with wig and crutch: because that foolish thing, Marie--Marie Montbert was the name of the little monkey; and as pretty a girl she was as I have ever seen with these eyes of mine--I have never seen the like of her. What was I going to say? Yes! Marie had made a _conditio sine qua non_, as we scholars say, that an old lady of the baron's family should be at the castle, if she was to come there. Well, now we had an elderly lady, a famous elderly lady, eh! Albert mine, eh?" and the honorable Toby t.i.ttered, and poked Albert most cordially in the side.

"Well, and how did the matter end?" asked Albert, who did not want to hear the part of the story which he knew.

"Why, I did not see it end; for we, Rose and I, ran away sometime before. To tell the truth, we were afraid the whole story might upset; for Marie had many friends in the city, who might make a great noise about it, and get us all, especially Rose and myself, into serious trouble. So we slipped off one fine morning, or rather one fine night, without taking leave, but requesting various things which happened to fall into our hands to keep us company in going away with us. Here in Grunwald we parted, or rather we were separated. For I was taken so sick--probably in consequence of the high living we had enjoyed at Grenwitz--that I could not go on, and had to be carried to the hospital. What I then thought was a great misfortune, turned out afterwards to be the most fortunate thing; for the late Dean Darkling, the father of Mrs. Professor Jager, who was then chaplain to the hospital, fell in love with my modest smiles, and insisted, as soon as I was well again, upon my entering his service. Well! from the servant of a minister to the s.e.xton of his church, it is but a step!" and Mr.

Toby sipped comfortably the remainder of his grog.

"And did you ever hear anything more of your friend Mrs. Rose?"