Part 7

"I cannot stay," said the girl, looking earnestly and beseechingly at the Prince. "I want to go with him."

The Prince hesitated for a moment. In an instantaneous flash of thought the two paths lay open before him, plain and clear to be seen. Carricchio's warning struck him again with renewed force. The more terrible presage of Mark's death cast itself, ghostlike, before his steps. He could plead no excuse of self-deception: he saw the beauty and the danger of the way which lay before him on either hand. He hesitated for a moment, then he deliberately chose the lower path.

"Tina," he said, "I cannot spare you; you must not go. You are mine--I love you; you belong to me;" and he stepped forward, as if to take her in his arms.

The girl sprang to her feet. She drew herself up to her full height, and her splendid eyes, expanded to their full orbit, flashed upon the Prince with a look of astonishment and reproach. With the entire power of her trained voice, which, magnificent as it was, could still but imperfectly render the reality of remonstrance and pathetic regret, she uttered but one word--"Prince!"

The cadence of her voice, trembling in the passionate intensity of musical tone, the whole power of her woman's nature, exerted to its full in expostulation and reproach--the magnetic force of her intense consciousness--struck upon the conscience and cultured taste of the Prince with crushing effect. He lost the perfectly serene tone of pose and demeanour which distinguished him and became him so well. He aged perceptibly, incredible as it may seem, ten years. The fatal step which he had taken was revealed to him in a moment as in a flash of light, with all the stain and taint with which it had tarnished the fair dream of finished art which he had conceived it possible to perfect. He was utterly demoralised and crushed. Mark's death was nothing to this. That had been a terrible mistake, but his part in it had been indirect, and his motive, at least so he flattered himself, comparatively high; but this action, so entirely his own, revealed to him, in its vulgar commonplaceness, by the glorious perfection of the girl's action and tone, withered him with a sense of irreparable failure and disgrace. He made one or two ineffectual attempts to rally; it was impossible--there was nothing for him but to leave the room.

Faustina was unconscious of his going. She found herself left alone. The situation was still not without its difficulties. She was alone, unattended by servants, she knew not where to go, how to leave the _Hotel_. She lay for some time in a sort of swoon; then she rose and wandered from the room.

The only means of exit with which she was acquainted was through the curtains into the _salon_. She parted them and went out, hardly knowing what she did.

The vast _salon_ was but dimly lighted, and no servants were to be seen; the whole house seemed silent and deserted--more especially these state apartments. She passed slowly and with faltering steps down the slippery floor of the _salon_, with its dimly-lighted candelabra of massive silver and its half-seen portraits, and, opening the great door at the opposite end, found herself in an antechamber which communicated with a grand staircase, both ascending and descending. To descend was evidently useless--she could not go out into the streets of Vienna alone at night and in her fanciful dress. She went up the wide staircase in the hope of finding some female domestics who would help her; as she reached the next flight the sound of music, subdued and solemn, fell upon her ear. She knew enough of German music to know that it was the tune of a hymn.

The door of the room from which the sound seemed to come stood partly open. She went in.

Before an harpsichord, with her hand carelessly passing over the keys, and her head turned at the sound of footsteps, stood the Princess Isoline. The light of a branched candelabra fell full upon her stately figure, revealing the compassionate, lofty expression of her beautiful face. The girl crossed the room towards her and fell on her knees at her feet.

"Child," said the Princess, "what is it? Why are you here?"

"I cannot tell," said the girl; and now at last she found it possible to weep. "I do not know what has happened. The Maestro has forsaken me, and I have insulted the Prince."

Gradually, in a broken way, she told her story, kneeling by the Princess, who stood serenely, her fingers still wandering over the harpsichord keys, her left hand caressing the girl's hair and cheek.

"He was a wonderful child," said the Princess at last, more to herself than to Faustina, for as she spoke she played again the simple notes of the Lutheran hymn. "He was truly a wonderful child. A very Christ-child, it seems to me, in his simple life and sudden death; for, though what he did was little, yet the lives of all of us seem different for his life--changed since his death. As for me, since his life crossed my path I have seen more, it seems to me, of the mercy of God and of Christ's working in paths and among lives where I never thought to look for it before."

Faustina did not reply, and the Princess played several bars of the hymn before she spoke again.

"Do you not see," she said at last, "the blessing it has been also to my brother the Prince?--for the desire that he felt, surely a noble one, to refine the life of art by the sacred touch of religion--the effort that he made, though it seemed a failure, and was made--it may be, I dare not judge him--blindly, and in a mistaken fashion; yet this effort has to-night proved his own salvation, through you."

She stopped, and again the notes of the hymn sounded through the room.

"Carricchio was right," she went on, "when he told the Prince that you alone of all of us had solved the riddle, for on you alone has art exercised its supreme, its magic touch, in drawing out and developing the emotions, the powers of the soul. You alone possessed the perfect gift of nature--the untainted well-spring of natural life--which assimilated Mark's spirit with your spirit, and reproduced his life within your own."

Faustina dropped the Princess's hand, which she had taken, and bent her head still lower, as if shrinking from her kindly praise.

"The Prince also had something of this gift, and, in so far as he had, he built up by his own action what, in his supreme need, saved him from his lower self. I have come to see that the world's virtues, which, in my self-righteous isolation, I despised, are often, as I blindly said to the boy, nearer Christ's than my vaunted ones; that the world-spirit is often the Christ-spirit, and that, when we begin to see that His footsteps may be traced in paths where we little expect to find them, we shall no longer dare to talk of the secular life. Your little brother that died was not without his work, and the canary even was the type of a nobler life, even as Mark's death was the type of a nobler death. In strange and unlooked-for ways the mission of sacrifice and love fulfils itself, and, living in the full light of its influence, we can never realise the blessing we have derived, the changed aspect of the race we have inherited, from the Cross of Christ."

IX.

THE next evening there was given, at the Imperial Palace, a ball and supper, to which none but _la haute noblesse_ were invited. The dancing began with a brilliant Polonaise, which, headed by the Empress-Queen and her husband, passed through the rooms in stately procession, in singular and picturesque contrast and harmony with another faded and more solemn procession and array of figures in antique armour and dainty ruffs and doublets, and gold chains and princely mantles, the ancestral portraits who watched the formal slow dance-movement from the walls.

After the Polonaise came the supper, which was somewhat prolonged. The supper over, a minuet was danced, and afterward, the company being now happy and cheerful, and being, moreover, of sufficiently high and similar rank to dispense with somewhat of the rigid court etiquette, began to wander through the rooms in an informal manner, and to arrange _contre-danses_ among themselves.

In those days the _contre-danse_ had not hardened itself into the quadrille. It was danced, not in fours, but in sets of varying numbers, and of characters and figures mostly undefined.

In one of the great halls, recently erected by the Emperor-architect, Charles VI., in a different taste from the older rooms, with marble floors and ceiling, and lined with mirrors, a very large set, composed of guests of the highest rank, was being watched by no inconsiderable number of their companions.

It is difficult to conceive a more magnificent or fascinating sight, reflected and multiplied as it was by the mirrors on the walls.

The Princess von Isenberg-Wertheim was dancing with a young noble, a prince of the House of Colleredo, a very handsome, but gay and reckless, young man. The dance was drawing to a close, the musicians, playing one of the last figures, _La Pastorelle_, to a very delicate and fine movement, to which the dancers were devoting their utmost, closest attention and skill.

As the Princess was standing by her partner, awaiting their turn to go down the dance, a slight movement caused her to turn her head, and she found the Count, her friend, standing close to her.

"I am sorry to interrupt, Princess," he said, in a low voice, "but I fear something serious has happened to the Prince. He cannot be found."

The Princess turned very pale. She caught her breath for a moment, then she said, in the same tone, "Where is Karl, the _Jager_?"

"I do not know," replied the Count. "I never thought of him."

"Then he is not here," said the Princess, with a relieved air. "If Karl is with him the Prince is safe."

The Count made a very slight movement of his shoulders, but the Princess turned serenely to the young man.

"We will finish the figure, Monseigneur," she said graciously; "then, perhaps, you will excuse me."

"Nothing has happened to the Prince, believe me," said the young man kindly, as they moved down the room. "He has doubtless gone on some private expedition with his servant. He probably forgot to leave a message, and will return to-morrow."

The Princess was so reassured, apparently, by these reflections that she remained for the final figure of the dance. Then she left the palace, and, declining the Count's company, drove to her _Hotel_ alone.

She was more strangely moved than she could have explained to herself. She was, indeed, frightened and perplexed by her own feelings. She felt herself influenced by an hitherto unrecognised power, and, as it were, driven onwards by an overpowering impulse, not her own.

Returning, as she did, at an unexpected hour, her women were not in waiting for her, and, leaving the servants who had accompanied her from the palace in the hall of the _Hotel_, she wandered up the great staircase alone. The corridors and rooms were dimly lighted, and a perfect stillness reigned through the house.

The Princess ascended slowly towards her own apartment, where she expected to find some, at least, of her dressers, and in so doing, in a dimly-lighted corridor, she passed the rooms allotted to her children. The thought of them was not, indeed, in her mind when, as she passed a door, she fancied that she heard a suppressed, continued crying, as of children in distress. Still more moved and troubled by this faint pathetic sound she opened the door and went in. The room was an antechamber, and both it and the apartment beyond were dark. The Princess procured a small lamp from the corridor and entered the suite of rooms.

In the bedchamber beyond the antechamber she found the children, both sitting up in one bed, clasped in each other's arms, and crying quietly. The little boy had evidently come for shelter and comfort to his sister's bed.

"What is the matter, children?" said the Princess, in a tone which seemed to the little ones strangely soft and kind. "Why are you not asleep?"

The children had ceased crying, and were looking at her wonderingly as she stood in her jewels and ball-dress, a brilliant scarf of Indian work hanging from her arm, the lamp in her hand. They hardly knew whether it was their mother, whom they saw so seldom, or some serene ethereal visitant, who resembled her in face and form.

The little Princess, however, with the self-possession of her class, apparently left this point undecided, and began in her quiet, stately little way to explain.

"It was dark," she said, "and we were asleep, Fritz and I, and we both dreamed the same dream. We thought that we were walking in a beautiful garden, where there were trees, and flowers, and butterflies, and wide cascades of water, in which rainbows were shining; and while we were playing there, and were very happy chasing the butterflies, the Herr Tutor, who was an angel, and who went to heaven, came and took us by the hand; and, when we saw his face, we knew that he is an angel now; and he led us through the garden, and talked to us of many things--of God, and of angels, and of heaven--just as he used to do. But I saw that, though he talked so pleasantly, he was leading us out of this pleasant garden, and the flowers grew dim, and the butterflies flew away, and the sky became very dark. And he led us quite out of the garden into a burial-ground, where there were tombs, and open graves, and crosses, and tall dark trees that bore no flower; and the Herr Tutor told us not to be afraid, and led us on through the graves without speaking any more. He led us into the midst of the burial-ground, and in the midst of the burial-ground there was a Calvary, and at the foot of the Calvary there was a bier. And on the bier we saw you and papa lying quite straight and still, and we thought that you were dead. And the Herr Tutor vanished away; and we were so frightened that we cried. And we knelt side by side, and prayed to the Christ that He would come down. And the Christ came down from the cross, and came to the bier, and touched it, and you and papa stood up beautiful and smiling, and came towards us with outstretched hands, and the Christ vanished away. And we were so glad that we awoke; and it was dark, and there was no Christ, and no Herr Tutor, who is an angel, and no papa, and no one to tell us what to do or where to go."

As the little Princess ceased some servants came in, with whispered explanations and apologies. The Princess went to her own room. She had not known what to say to the child; indeed, she hardly knew what had passed. She allowed herself to be undressed, and lay down.

But, in the deep silence of the hours that preceded the dawn, an overpowering restlessness took possession of her. A sense of strange forces and influences, to which she was utterly unaccustomed, seemed present to her spirit: a crowd of fair and heavenly existences, which seemed to follow on the steps of that singular boy who had first attracted her wearied fancy, the Signorina's singing, which had stamped this impression upon her mind, the strange tenderness she had been conscious of, the renewed sense of her husband's grace and beauty, his alarming absence, her children's mystical dream. A new world seemed to open to her. She felt how poor and bare her life had been, how deserted by these gracious creatures of the imagination, how unblessed by the purest, the truest art--the art of pathos and of love.

With the streaks of dawn that stole into the chamber she was conscious of an irrepressible desire that took possession of her to rise and go forth. An irresistible power seemed to draw her to follow: she rose, and, dressing herself in such clothes as were at hand, she went out.

The house itself was quite still, but faintly in the distance might be heard the sound of a bell. In so religious a Court as that of Vienna there were private chapels attached to most of the houses of the nobility, and there was one attached to a neighbouring palace, to which there was a private communication with the _Hotel_ taken by the Prince.

Following the sound of the bell the Princess traversed several passages, and reached at last a staircase, down which she turned. As she reached the first landing two women came out from an open door. They started at the sight of the Princess. They were the Princess Isoline and Faustina.

"Is it you, Princess?" said the former. "What has called you up so early?"

"Are you going to the chapel, Isoline?" said the Princess. "May I come with you?"

+ + + + +

The three ladies entered the chapel by a private door, which led them to a pew behind the stalls. Upon the original Gothic stone-work and tracery of the chapel, which was very old, had been introduced rococo work in mahogany and brass, angels and trumpets and scrolls. The stalls and organs were covered with filigree work of this description, the windows filled with paintings in the same florid and incongruous taste. There were few persons in the chapel, most of them being ladies from the adjoining palaces, together with a few musicians, for the musical part of the service was carefully performed by a large and well-paid staff.

Two of the ladies were Protestant, the third, Faustina, a Catholic of a very undeveloped type; but the music of the Mass spoke a mysterious language, recognisable to hearts of every creed.

Before the altar, laden with gilded plate and lighted with candles in silver sconces, the priest said Mass. Above him, in the window, painted in a lovely Italian landscape full of figures, with towns and castles and mountain ranges and market-people with horses and cattle, were represented, in careful and minute painting, the three Marys before the empty tomb.

"The City of the Sunlight," sang the choir, in an elaborate anthem, with an allegro movement of the tenors that spoke of sunshine amid the grass and flowers and flashing sea, of the breezy south wind upon rippling water and golden hair; and after them the bass recitative, with a positive assurance that knew no doubt, asserted "The gates--the gates of it are many--many," which the tenors and altos, with a sudden inspiration, interpreted, "God's purposes fulfilled--fulfilled in many ways;" and the whole choir, in a minor key, as with hushed and awe-struck voices, completed the theme, "But the end is union in the heart--the heart of the Crucifix; in the City--the City of the Saints."

* * * * *

On her return from the chapel a note from the Prince was put into the Princess's hand. It merely stated that he was gone to Hernhuth to the Count Zinzendorf. It had been written at a tavern in the environs of the city, after his sudden determination had been formed the day before, and had been entrusted to a servant of the inn to deliver. He had arrived at the _Hotel_ after the Princess had left, and, on asking for her Highness, had been told by a careless porter that she was at the Palace. Wandering about the Palace courts late at night he had been arrested as a suspicious person, and kept prisoner till the morning.

+ + + + +

In course of time (posts were slow in those days) the Princess received a long letter from her husband, giving an account of Hernhuth, and of his conversations with the Count, and concluding with these words:--

"From all this you will, doubtless, conclude that Hernhuth does not suit me very well, and that the Count and I do not always agree. It would be more after Isoline's taste. I like the children's dream, as you tell it, best. We have been dead, and laid upon a bier; but we will, please God, live hereafter for the children and the Christ."

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