Part 29

“By Jove! I know that perfectly well; but pray soothe without weakening me. Relieve me from this convulsive tremor, but do not deprive me of my strength.”

The sick man was demanding an impossibility, but the physician dared not tell him so.

“I am in hopes,” he said, “that this draught will quiet without enfeebling you.”

“Well, but will it act quickly? I want to sleep two or three hours, and then get up and attend to some business. Can you guarantee that I shall regain my usual command of my faculties in the course of the night?”

“Your lordship is driving me to despair! Do you propose to go to work again to-night after yesterday’s attack, and to-day’s? You cannot go on in that way.”

“But have I not an uncommon constitution? And have you not told me a hundred times that you would cure me? Have you been deceiving me? Are you making sport of me?”

“Ah!” replied the physician, with a distressed expression, “you surely could not believe such a thing!”

“Well, well, give me the draught. Will it act at once?”

“In a quarter of an hour, provided you do not destroy its effect by your agitation.”

“Give me my watch. There, put it by my side. I want to see if you are sure of the effects of your own drugs.”

The baron drank off the potion, seated himself in his great arm-chair, and rang for his valet-de-chambre.

“Go and find Major Larrson,” he said, “and say to him from me that I beg him to superintend the race. He understands about such matters better than any one else.”

The valet went out, but the baron recalled him almost instantly.

“Tell Johan to go to bed and to sleep. I shall want him at three o’clock in the morning. Let him come himself, and wake me up. Go now--no, wait, I am to hunt to-morrow. Is everything ready? Yes? Very good. Now you may go.”

The valet really went this time; and the young physician, who was very much agitated, remained alone with his patient.

“Your draught has no effect at all,” said the latter, impatiently. “I ought to have been asleep by this time.”

“If your lordship will persist in tormenting yourself about a thousand and one details--”

“The devil! my dear sir, if I were not obliged to torment myself, I should not need a physician. Come, take a seat. Let us have a little quiet conversation.”

“If, instead of talking, your lordship would reflect quietly.”

“Reflect! I reflect a great deal too much as it is. It is that that makes me so feverish. No, no, let us talk, as we did last night. I fell asleep, you know, talking. You are aware, doctor, that I have resolved definitely to marry?”

“That pretty Countess Margaret?”

“Not at all; she’s a little fool. I am going to marry the stately Olga. I mean to have some Russian children.”

“They will be handsome, that is certain.”

“Yes, if my wife has good taste; for I don’t believe one word of your flatteries, doctor. My wife will not be faithful to me. What difference does it make, provided that I have an heir; provided all my hopeful relations, cousins and second cousins, are baffled and infuriated. Doctor, I insist upon living long enough to see that; do you understand? Now see to it;--remember I don’t bequeath you a single ducat. I shall pay you exorbitantly as long as I live, so as to make it your interest to do well by me; but that is all. As for my wife, I shall treat her in the same way. During my life, she shall have all the luxury, all the jewels she wants, and more and more every year. After my death, unless she has saved something, she will have nothing at all; I won’t leave her even the guardianship of her own child. Far from it; I don’t want to be poisoned.”

“You are feeding your mind on gloomy ideas, your lordship; that’s a bad diet.”

“What nonsense that is, doctor! It is as if you should tell me that I did wrong to have too much bile in my liver. Is it my fault?”

“But can’t you force yourself to dwell on cheerful ideas? There’s that comedy of marionettes, for instance. It was very amusing.”

“Think about a set of puppets? Do you want to turn me into an idiot?”

“For the time being, certainly, if I could quiet down the fire of your thoughts--”

“No compliments about my intellect, I beg you. I am conscious that it is failing, decidedly.”

“Your lordship is the only one who perceives it.”

The baron shrugged his shoulders, yawned, and was silent for a few minutes. His eyes seemed to grow larger, the pupils dilated, and his lower lip drooped a little. Sleep was approaching.

Suddenly he started up, and pointed to the wall.

“There it is again,” he cried, “just as it was yesterday! It was a man at first, and then the face changed--There, she is looking out of the window--she bends over--run, run, doctor! They have deceived me! betrayed me! I have been fooled like a child--A child? No, there was no child!--”

By this time he was wide awake, and sitting down again, he added, with a gloomy smile:

“It was in Christian Waldo’s comedy;--a juggler’s trick! You see, doctor, I am thinking about the puppets, as you wished. I feel heavy--do not leave me.”

And even as he spoke, the baron fell asleep, with his eyes open like a corpse.

In a few moments, his eyelids relaxed and then closed. The doctor felt his pulse. It was too full and heavy. In his opinion the patient ought to be bled, but how could he induce him to allow it?

“A thankless, odious, impossible task to be keeping this man alive, in spite of heaven and himself!” Thus reflected the poor doctor. “Either he has constant attacks of insanity, or else he is tormented by remorse. I feel as if I should go crazy myself from being with him; the terrors of his imagination seize upon me, too, as if I were becoming the accomplice of some crime, by trying to save his life!”

But the young man had a mother, and a betrothed sweetheart; and as a few years of lucrative employment would enable him to marry the one, and save the other from poverty, he had consented to be nailed to this corpse, incessantly galvanized into a seeming life by the resources of his art. Sometimes he was full of devotion to his task, and again felt so broken down with fatigue and disgust, that he scarcely knew whether he would prefer to have his patient die or recover. The young man was of a kindly disposition and an excellent heart. This constant intercourse with an atheist was freezing him; and he had not even the privilege of defending his opinions, for contradiction irritated the patient. He was sociable and cheerful, while the sick man, under his outward habit of sour and cynical raillery, was gloomy and misanthropic.

While the baron lay there asleep, moreover, the pleasures of the night were under full headway. The sounds of fireworks and music, the barking of the dogs roused out of their kennels by the stamping of the horses that were being harnessed, the laughter of the ladies in the corridors of the chateau, the gleaming lights that could be seen moving upon the lake, everything that was going on outside of the silent and gloomy chamber where the sick man, immovable and livid, lay in heavy slumber, intensified the young man’s sense of isolation and servitude.

The Countess d’Elveda, in the meanwhile, was absorbed in conspiring with the Russian ambassador against the nationality of Sweden; while the cousins and second cousins of the baron were keeping watch upon the door of his apartments.

“He will go,” they whispered to each other; “no, he will not be able. He is more ill than he will confess. He is better than people think.”

How were they to ascertain? The servants, perfectly devoted to the absolute will of this master, who paid well, and punished well too--for in Sweden, servants at this period were still liable to corporal punishment--invariably replied, when questioned, that the baron had never been better. And as for the doctor, the baron, on engaging him, had required him to give his word of honor that he would never reveal the serious nature of his malady.

As the reader has already been told, the baron, to account for his frequent disappearances from his entertainments, had caused it to be generally understood that he was always liable to be called away by some one or other of his numerous and important engagements. This was, moreover, to a certain extent true; he was accustomed to supervise the details of the political intrigues in which he was concerned; and his private affairs were embarrassed with the lawsuits to which his restless disposition and despotic claims were constantly giving rise. Now, however, superadded to all these causes of excitement, was a strange trouble, indistinct as yet, but which produced more effect upon his bodily health than all his ordinary annoyances together. Forgotten suspicions, apprehensions long ago quieted, had been reawakened in his mind since the ball of the evening before, and still more since the exhibition of marionettes. The result had been one of the nervous attacks to which he was liable, whose effect was to distort his mouth, and give a distinct cast to one of his eyes. As he was very vain of his beauty--his face, although wasted, was still noble and regular--especially at the present time, when he was proposing to be married, he had shut himself up as much as possible since this disfiguration came on, and was receiving medical treatment, to carry him through the attack as rapidly as possible.

As soon as he awoke from his slumber, his first care was to look in a glass which was placed near him. Pleased to find that he had recovered his natural expression, he said to the physician:

“Come, there’s another one over! I feel as if I had slept well. Did I dream, doctor?”

“No,” replied the young man, but with some embarrassment at the falsehood he was telling.

“You don’t say that very frankly,” answered the baron. “Now, if I talked in my sleep, you must tell me exactly what I said. You know I insist upon it.”

“You only uttered disconnected words, without meaning. They did not indicate any distinct thoughts.”

“Then your prescriptions must really be having a good effect. The physician whom I employed formerly, used to tell me my dreams. They were strange enough--frightful! I seem to have none now but insignificant ones.”

“Are you not aware of it yourself, your lordship? Don’t you feel less fatigued on waking than formerly?”

“No, I can’t say that I do.”

“That will come in time.”

“I hope so! Now, doctor, you may leave me, if you please; you can go to bed. If I need you, I will send and have you waked up. I feel as if I could sleep a while longer. Send me my valet-de-chambre; I will try and get into bed.”

“My predecessor,” said the young doctor to himself, as he went out, “heard too much, and repeated too freely what he heard. The baron, in consequence, was offended; they quarrelled, and the doctor was persecuted, until he had to leave the country. A good lesson to me!”

Christian, meanwhile, had rejoined M. Goefle, at Stollborg. The doctor of laws was in great triumph. He had forced the lock of one of the great wardrobes in the guard-room, and had found some feminine garments, which were quite magnificent.

“These things,” he said to Christian, “must certainly be a remnant of the wardrobe of the Baroness Hilda; either forgotten, or religiously preserved by Stenson. They will do nicely for costumes, they are so thoroughly old-fashioned. They belong twenty years back, at least. See if you can’t get into one of them. The baroness was tall, and it’s no harm if your dress should be a little short. I mean to contrive a sultan’s dress for myself, with my pelisse and a turban of some kind. You can help me get one up, Christian; you are an artist. Every artist must know how to make a turban.”

Christian was not at all intoxicated, and the burglarious performance of M. Goefle rather disturbed him.

“People are always accusing persons in my line of such things,” he said, “and generally with some reason. You will see that this will make me trouble.”

“Bah! bah! I am here,” cried M. Goefle; “I will take all the responsibility. Come, Christian, put on this dress! Try it, at any rate!”

“My dear M. Goefle,” said Christian, “just let me swallow something or other, no matter what; I am dying of hunger.”

“Sure enough! But be quick.”

“Besides,” said Christian, who, standing as he was, began at the same time to eat his supper and to examine the clothes that were displayed before him, “I don’t know how it is, but I feel a sort of reluctance to touch those old relics. The fate of that poor Baroness Hilda was such a sad one! Do you know that I have been growing more and more suspicious about the manner of her death?”

“Go to the devil!” answered M. Goefle. “I am not in the mood for figuring over all those old stories now. I want to laugh and fly about. Come, come, Christian, to work! let those melancholy notions go over until to-morrow. See--put on this polonaise dress; it’s splendid. If you can only get your shoulders through it, the rest will come right of itself.”

“I don’t believe I can,” said Christian, as he put his hand into one of the pockets. “But what a little hand she must have had, to go into such a small place as that.”

“And you as well, it seems!”

“Yes, but I can’t draw mine out again. Stay, what’s this! Why, a note!”

“Let’s see, let’s see!” cried the doctor of laws; “that must be very curious!”

“No,” said Christian, “we ought not to read it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know--it seems like a profanation.”

“In that case, I have been guilty of a great many--it’s part of my trade to rummage secret family archives.”

And M. Goefle seized the old yellow paper, and read as follows:

“MY DEARLY BELOVED HILDA:

“I have just reached Stockholm, and find the Count de Rosenstein here. I shall not be obliged, therefore, to go on to Colmar, and shall set out on my return on the 10th instant, to embrace you again, and comfort you, and take care of you, and to indulge with you in new dreams of happiness, since God has once more blessed our union. I send you this by express, to put you at ease about my journey, which was not all unpleasant, though so fatiguing that I congratulated myself more than once upon my prudence in not bringing you with me, in the situation in which you are. As far as to Falun, I had to ride on horseback the whole way. Farewell, then, my love, until the 15th or 16th, at latest. We shall have no lawsuit with Rosenstein; it will be all arranged.

“I love you.

“ADELSTAN DE WALDEMORA.”

“M. Goefle,” said Christian to the lawyer, who was silently refolding the dress, “does it not seem to you horribly sad to find this letter of love and conjugal happiness among the clothes of this dead lady?”

“It is melancholy!” replied M. Goefle, taking off his spectacles and his extempore turban. “And so very strange! Do you know that this letter has set me to thinking? But the poor baroness was mistaken; she was not pregnant, for she made a voluntary declaration to that effect; Stenson told me so to-day. He was present when she signed it. But let’s see the date of that letter.”

M. Goefle replaced his spectacles, and read: “Stockholm, 5th March, 1746.”

“Yes,” he continued, “that agrees, if I remember right. Pshaw! That story is too sad for a man who wants to amuse himself. But I will keep the note, however; it might suggest something. I will examine my father’s papers again. But come, Christian, have you given up the idea of disguising yourself?”

“With those old clothes that smell of the grave? Yes indeed! they have chilled me to the marrow of my bones. She was virtuous, cultivated and beautiful, you told me this morning; the pearl of Dalecarlia! And she died quite young, did she not?”

“At twenty-five or twenty-six; about ten months after the date of this note: it was in March, 1746, that Baron Adelstan was assassinated. These are probably the last words he ever wrote to his wife, and probably that is the reason she carried the letter in her pocket until her death.”

“How unfortunate she was!” said Christian. “A young wife, a young mother, suddenly left a widow and childless; and then to die a victim to the baron’s hatred--”

“Oh, there is no proof whatever of that! But hark to the firing! The race is beginning, and here we are talking over matters that have no interest for anybody, and which, after all, are none of our business. If you feel melancholy this evening, my boy, stay at home; for my part, I want to run about. I must get out into the air. I have done too much dreaming to-day.”

Christian would really have preferred to remain at home, but M. Goefle was so excited that he was rather afraid to let him go alone; so he said:

“Come, let us give up the disguises. It will not do for us to be seen together with our faces uncovered, so let us both go masked. You shall be Christian Waldo, as you are the best dressed; and as I have been taken for my assistant once already to-night, I will be Puffo.”

“Very well imagined!” cried M. Goefle. “Come along! By the way, we will leave the light burning for Master Nils; he may wake up, and then he will be frightened, and perhaps hungry. I will leave a leg of chicken here under his nose.”

“Little Nils! Is he here again?”

“Why yes, certainly! The first thing I did, on returning, was to go and hunt him up in the stable, bring him in here, undress him, and put him to bed. The young monkey would have frozen before morning, out in that straw.”

“Had he come to his senses at all?”

“Oh, perfectly; at least enough to complain that I troubled him dreadfully, and to grumble while I was putting him to bed.”

“And where can Puffo be? I did not see him in the stable when I put Jean in there again.”

“I did not see him, either; he must have gone to get drunk again with Ulphilas. Well, much good may it do them! It is almost midnight; let us go. You will help me harness my horse. Ah! you may be sure that my good Loki will not come in last.”

“But will they not recognize you from your horse and sleigh?”

“No, there’s nothing particular about the sleigh. It is true that I bought the horse in this neighborhood only last year; but we will cover him up with his travelling-cloth.”

The goal selected for the race proposed by the baron, and intrusted to the superintendence of Major Larrson, was the _hogar_ which stood at the further end of the lake, about half a league from Stollborg and the new chateau. These two buildings, as we have said, were quite near each other, the one being built on an island not far from the shore, and the other on the shore itself. A hogar is a tumulus, or mound, such as are supposed to have been used as burial-places by the ancient Scandinavian chiefs. They are usually round, and very steep. The top is flat, and formerly, it is said, platforms were erected upon them, where the barbarian kings pronounced judgment, using them as courts of justice. They are met with in all parts of Sweden, and, indeed, are exceedingly numerous.

The one at which the race was to terminate presented a fantastic appearance; it had been crowned with a triple row of torches of resin, and through their dark red flames, and clouds of smoke, a gigantic white figure was visible, towering on high. This was a statue of snow, formless and colossal, which the peasants had built up during the day, by order of the baron. Knowing perfectly well the surname that had been conferred upon him, he had banteringly promised the ladies to show them, by way of a surprise, a portrait of himself upon the top of the mound. The rudeness of the work harmonized with the savage features of the landscape, and recalled the idols of former ages, with their large heads and short rough garments, which, according to tradition, represented Thor, the Scandinavian Jupiter, holding the terrible hammer above his crowned head.

This white colossus, seeming to float up in the air, had a very impressive effect, and no one regretted having ventured out into the cold night air to enjoy so strange a spectacle. There was an aurora borealis, pale, and contending with the light of the moon; but the alternations of color, and the waves of rising and falling light, which characterize this phenomenon, gave the landscape a shifting uncertainty of outline, and cast over it a changing play of lights and shadows which it is impossible to describe. Christian fancied that he was dreaming; and he repeated over and over again to M. Goefle that this strange scenery, notwithstanding the inclemency of the climate, appealed to his imagination more powerfully than anything he had seen in all his travels.

The exercises of the race had already begun when our two friends joined the party, and they drove along the flank of the other vehicles, so as not to interfere with their prearranged order. The ice had been carefully examined, and the road, marked out by colossal torches, wound past the points of rock and islets covered with pines and birch-trees, which dotted the surface of the lake. A phalanx of richly-ornamented sleighs, four abreast, flew along the course like arrows; the skill of the drivers, and the perfect training of the horses, maintaining them at exactly the same distance from each other.

Towards the shore where the hogar stood the lake was deeper than elsewhere, and presented a broad expanse, perfectly level and unobstructed. On reaching this, all the sleighs came to a halt in a semicircle, and the young people who were to compete for the prize took their places in a line, ready for the signal. The ladies, and older gentlemen, left their vehicles, and ascended a little island, prepared for the purpose by being thickly laid with pine boughs, where they would be able to behold and judge the prowess of the competing parties without danger of freezing their feet. A great fire, built upon the rocks behind the natural gallery where the audience was thus assembled, cast a powerful red glow over the whole scene.

The picture presented by the assembled company was not less strange than the landscape which served as its frame. Everybody wore masks, and found them a comfortable defence against the coldness of the air. For a similar reason, all the costumes were heavy, and well furred; but this did not prevent a great display of gold, embroidery, and glittering weapons. The racers were plainly visible in their light, uncovered sleighs, which represented fantastic images of different animals: gigantic silver swans with red beaks, dolphins of green and gold, fishes with tails curved over their backs, and so on. Major Larrson was mounted on a frightful dragon, and was himself disguised as a monster, crowned with glittering thunderbolts. The judges who were to award the prize could be seen moving to and fro on the top of the hogar, costumed as antique warriors with winged helmets, or with hoods having a horn over each ear, as Odin is represented in his costume of ceremony; that is to say, in all the splendor of his divinity.

Christian tried to recognize Margaret among the ladies, who were disguised as sibyls, or barbarian queens. He could not succeed; and from that moment the whole ceremonial, without losing its brilliancy, lost all interest for him, except as a mere spectacle. M. Goefle, however, who did not feel the same disappointment, continued very much excited.

“Christian,” he cried, “in spite of our costumes, which are no costumes, and our sleigh, which is only a sleigh, why should we not take a place in the line? Because my brave Loki has no plumes, nor stuffed birds, nor horns on his head, will that make his legs any the worse?”

“That is for you to say, doctor,” replied Christian; “you know him; you can tell whether he will cover us with glory or with shame.”

“It will be with glory; I know it.”

“Go on, then.”

“But the poor fellow will be tired. He will get heated, and God only knows whether he will not have inflammation of the lungs!”

“Don’t go, then.”

“The devil take your indifference, Christian! For my part, my hands are burning to try it.”

“Try it, then!”