Chapter 41

were dead, since Eugen, by his wickedness, had destroyed every chance of happiness; she might as well be a widow. She sent me a package of letters--my letters--and asked me to keep them, together with some other things, an old desk among the rest. She had no means of destroying them all, and she did not choose to carry them to Rothenfels, whither she was going to be buried alive with those awful people.

"I accepted the charge. For five--no, six years, the desk, the papers, everything lay with some other possessions of mine which I could not carry about with me on the wandering life I led after my father's death--stored in an old trunk in the lumber-room of a cousin's house. I visited that house last week.

"Certain circumstances which have occurred of late years induced me to look over those papers. I burned the old bundle of letters from myself to her, and then I looked through the desk. In a pigeon-hole I found these."

She handed some pieces of paper to Graf Bruno, who looked at them. I, too, have seen them since. They bore the imitations of different signatures; her husband's, Graf Bruno's, that of Anna Sartorius, and others which I did not know.

The same conviction as that which had struck Anna flashed into the eyes of Graf von Rothenfels.

"I found those," repeated Anna, "and I knew in a second who was the culprit. He, your brother, is no criminal. She forged the signature of the Herr Graf--"

"Who forged the signature of the Herr Graf?" asked a voice which caused me to start up, which brought all our eyes from Anna's face, upon which they had been fastened, and showed us Eugen standing in the door-way, with compressed lips and eyes that looked from one to the other of us anxiously.

"Your wife," said Anna, calmly. And before any one could speak she went on: "I have helped to circulate the lie about you, Herr Graf"--she spoke to Eugen--"for I disliked you; I disliked your family, and I disliked, or rather wished to punish, Miss Wedderburn for her behavior to me. But I firmly believed the story I circulated. The moment I knew the truth I determined to set you right. Perhaps I was pleased to be able to circumvent your plans. I considered that if I told the truth to Friedhelm Helfen he would be as silent as yourself, because you chose to be silent. The same with May Wedderburn, therefore I decided to come to head-quarters at once. It is useless for you to try to appear guilty any longer," she added, mockingly. "You can tell them all the rest, and I will wish you good-afternoon."

She was gone. From that day to this I have never seen her nor heard of her again. Probably with her power over us her interest in us ceased.

Meanwhile I had released myself from the spell which held me, and gone to the countess. Something very like fear held me from approaching Eugen.

Count Bruno had gone to his brother, and touched his shoulder. Eugen looked up. Their eyes met. It just flashed into my mind that after six years of separation the first words were--must be--words of reconciliation, of forgiveness asked on the one side, eagerly extended on the other.

"Eugen!" in a trembling voice, and then, with a positive sob, "canst thou forgive?"

"My brother--I have not resented. I could not. Honor in thee, as honor in me--"

"But that thou wert doubted, hated, mistak--"

But another had asserted herself. The countess had come to herself again, and going up to him, looked him full in the face and kissed him.

"Now I can die happy! What folly, Eugen! and folly like none but thine. I might have known--"

A faint smile crossed his lips. For all the triumphant vindication, he looked very pallid.

"I have often wondered, Hildegarde, how so proud a woman as you could so soon accept the worthlessness of a pupil on whom she had spent such pains as you upon me. I learned my best notions of honor and chivalry from you. You might have credited me rather with trying to carry the lesson out than with plucking it away and casting it from me at the first opportunity."

"You have much to forgive," said she.

"Eugen, you came to see me on business," said his brother.

Eugen turned to me. I turned hot and then cold. This was a terrible ordeal indeed. He seemed metamorphosed into an exceedingly grand personage as he came to me, took my hand, and said, very proudly and very gravely:

"The first part of my business related to Sigmund. It will not need to be discussed now. The rest was to tell you that this young lady--in spite of having heard all that could be said against me--was still not afraid to assert her intention to honor me by becoming my wife and sharing my fate. Now that she has learned the truth--May, do you still care for me enough to marry me?"

"If so," interrupted his brother before I could speak, "let me add my petition and that of my wife--do you allow me, Hildegarde?"

"Indeed, yes, yes!"

"That she will honor us and make us happy by entering our family, which can only gain by the acquisition of such beauty and excellence."

The idea of being entreated by Graf Bruno to marry his brother almost overpowered me. I looked at Eugen and stammered out something inaudible, confused, too, by the look he gave me.

He was changed; he was more formidable now than before, and he led me silently up to his brother without a word, upon which Count Bruno crowned my confusion by uttering some more very Grandisonian words and gravely saluting my cheek. That was certainly a terrible moment, but from that day to this I have loved better and better my haughty brother-in-law.

Half in consideration for me, I believe, the countess began:

"But I want to know, Eugen, about this. I don't quite understand yet how you managed to shift the blame upon yourself."

"Perhaps he does not want to tell," said I, hastily.

"Yes; since the truth is known, I may tell the rest," said he. "It was a very simple matter. After all was lost, my only ray of comfort was that I could pay my debts by selling everything, and throwing up my commission. But when I thought of my wife I felt a devil. I suppose that is the feeling which the devils do experience in place of love--at least Heine says so:

"'Die Teufel nennen es Höllenqual, Die Menschen nennen es Liebe.'

"I kept it from her as long as I could. It was a week after Sigmund was born that at last one day I had to tell her. I actually looked to her for advice, help. It was tolerably presumptuous in me, I must say, after what I had brought her to. She brought me to reason. May Heaven preserve men from needing such lessons! She reproached me--ay, she did reproach me. I thank my good genius, or whatever it is that looks after us, that I could set my teeth and not answer her a syllable."

"The minx!" said the countess aside to me. "I would have shaken her!"

"'What was she to do without a groschen?' she concluded, and I could only say that I had had thoughts of dropping my military career and taking to music in good earnest. I had never been able to neglect it, even in any worst time, for it was a passion with me. She said:

"'A composer--a beggar!' That was hard.

"I asked her, 'Will you not help me?'

"'Never, to degrade yourself in that manner,' she assured me.

"Considering that I had deserved my punishment, I left her. I sat up all night, I remember, thinking over what I had brought her to, and wondering what I could do for her. I wondered if you, Bruno, would help her and let me go away and work out my punishment, for, believe me, I never thought of shirking it. I had been most effectually brought to reason, and your example, and yours, Hildegarde, had taught me a different kind of moral fiber to that.

"I brought your note about the check to Vittoria, and asked her if she knew anything about it. She looked at me, and in that instant I knew the truth. She did not once attempt to deny it. I do not know what, in my horrible despair and shame, I may have said or done.

"I was brought to my senses by seeing her cowering before me, with her hands before her face, and begging me not to kill her. I felt what a brute I must have been, but that kind of brutality has been knocked out of me long ago. I raised her, and asked her to forgive me, and bade her keep silence and see no one, and I would see that she did not suffer for it.

"Everything seemed to stand clearly before me. If I had kept straight, the poor ignorant thing would never have been tempted to such a thing. I settled my whole course in half an hour, and have never departed from it since.

"I wrote that letter to you, and went and read it to my wife. I told her that I could never forgive myself for having caused her such unhappiness, and that I was going to release her from me. I only dropped a vague hint about the boy at first; I was stooping over his crib to say good-bye to him. She said, 'What am I to do with him?' I caught at the idea, and she easily let me take him. I asked Hugo von Meilingen to settle affairs for me, and left that night. Thanks to you, Bruno, the story never got abroad. The rest you know."

"What did you tell Hugo von Meilingen?"

"Only that I had made a mess of everything and broken my wife's heart, which he did not seem to believe. He was stanch. He settled up everything. Some day I will thank him for it. For two years I traveled about a good deal. Sigmund has been more a citizen of the world than he knows. I had so much facility of execution--"

"So much genius, you mean," I interposed.

"That I never had any difficulty in getting an engagement. I saw a wonderful amount of life of a certain kind, and learned most thoroughly to despise my own past, and to entertain a thorough contempt for those who are still leading such lives. I have learned German history in my banishment. I have lived with our trues heroes--the lower middle-classes."

"Well, well! You were always a radical, Eugen," said the count, indulgently.

"At last, at Köln I obtained the situation of first violinist in the Elberthal Kapelle, and I went over there one wet October afternoon and saw the director, von Francius. He was busy, and referred me to the man who was next below me, Friedhelm Helfen."

Eugen paused, and choked down some little emotion ere he added:

"You must know him. I trust to have his friendship till death separates us. He is a nobleman of nature's most careful making--a knight _sans peur et sans reproche_. When Sigmund came here it was he who saved me from doing something desperate or driveling--there is not much of a step between the two. Fräulein Sartorius, who seems to have a peculiar disposition, took it into her head to confront me with a charge of my guilt at a public place. Friedhelm never wavered, despite my shame and my inability to deny the charge."

"Oh, dear, how beautiful!" said the countess, in tears.

"We must have him over here and see a great deal of him."

"We must certainly know him, and that soon," said Count Bruno.

At this juncture I, from mingled motives, stole from the room, and found my way to Sigmund's bedside, where also joy awaited me. The stupor and the restlessness had alike vanished; he was in a deep sleep. I knelt down by the bedside and remained there long.

Nothing, then, was to be as I had planned it. There would be no poverty, no shame to contend against--no struggle to make, except the struggle up to the standard--so fearfully severe and unapproachable, set up by my own husband. Set up and acted upon by him. How could I ever attain it or anything near it? Should I not be constantly shocking him by coarse, gross notions as to the needlessness of this or that fine point of conduct? by my ill-defined ideas as to a code of honor--my slovenly ways of looking at questions?

It was such a fearful height, this to which he had carried his notions and behavior in the matter of chivalry and loyalty. How was I ever to help him to carry it out, and moreover, to bring up this child before me, and perhaps children of my own in the same rules?

It was no doubt a much more brilliant destiny which actually awaited me than any which I had anticipated--the wife of a nobleman, with the traditions of a long line of noblemen and noblewomen to support, and a husband with the most impossible ideas upon the subject.

I felt afraid. I thought of that poor, vain, selfish first wife, and I wondered if ever the time might come when I might fall in his eyes as she had fallen, for scrupulous though he was to cast no reproach upon her, I felt keenly that he despised her, that had she lived, after that dreadful discovery he would never have loved her again. It was awful to think of. True, I should never commit forgery; but I might, without knowing it, fail in some other way, and then--woe to me!

Thus dismally cogitating I was roused by a touch on my shoulder and a kiss on the top of my head. Eugen was leaning over me, laughing.

"You have been saying your prayers so long that I was sure you must be asking too much."

I confided some of my doubts and fears to him, for with his actual presence that dreadful height of morality seemed to dwindle down. He was human too--quick, impulsive, a very mortal. And he said:

"I would ask thee one thing, May. Thou dost not seem to see what makes all the difference. I loved Vittoria: I longed to make some sacrifice for her, would she but have let me. But she could not; poor girl! She did not love me."

"Well?"

"Well! _Mein Engel_--you do," said he, laughing.

"Oh, I see!" said I, feeling myself blushing violently. Yes, it was true. Our union should be different from that former one. After all it was pleasant to find that the high tragedy which we had so wisely planned for ourselves had made a _faux pas_ and come ignominiously to ground.