Fickle Fortune

CHAPTER XI

Next morning brought inclement autumn weather. Fog and drizzling rain obscured the landscape, and bushes and flowers bore evidences of the first nipping frost.

All the Ettersberg servants had their heads together, and were asking each other what could possibly have happened. That something had happened was as clear as day.

But the afternoon before, when the visitors from Brunneck had been at the castle, perfect union and cheerfulness had reigned; but shortly afterwards, from the moment the young master had left his mother's apartments, there had been disturbance throughout the house.

Since then the Count had remained invisible, shut up in his own room. The Countess was very ill, so her maid reported; but she would see no one, and had even forbidden that a doctor should be sent for.

Baron Heideck had made two attempts that morning to gain access to his nephew. To him, as to all others, admittance was refused. Family scenes being things quite unfamiliar to this household, imagination had the greater scope, and supplied various explanations, none of which, however, approached the truth.

It was almost noon. Heideck had made a third essay to reach the young Count, but once more without avail. Old Everard, dismayed and helpless, stood in the presence of the Baron, who was saying, with great determination of tone:

'I must see my nephew, cost what it may. It is impossible that he can be deaf to all this calling and knocking. Something must have happened to him.'

'I heard the Count pacing incessantly up and down all night,' timidly remarked Everard. 'He has only been quiet for the last half-hour.'

'No matter,' declared Heideck. 'He may have had a fresh hemorrhage from his wound and have fainted. I have no alternative but to force open the door.'

'There may, perhaps, be another way,' said Everard hesitatingly. 'The small tapestried door, which leads from the Count's dressing-room to his bedroom, is generally kept unlocked. If we–'

'Why did you not tell me this before?' Heideck interrupted him, with some heat. 'Why did I not hear of this the first thing this morning? Show me the door at once.'

The old servant suffered the rebuke in silence. He did not believe in the fainting or the hemorrhage, the fear of which was to serve as a pretext for a forcible intrusion. He had distinctly heard his young master's footsteps all the night through, but had felt that the latter desired to be left absolutely alone. Now, however, no choice was left him; he must point out the door of which he had spoken. It proved to be unlocked, as he had supposed.

Heideck motioned to the old man to remain outside, and went in alone to his nephew. The bedchamber was empty, the bed untouched. With rapid steps, the Baron passed on into the adjoining sitting-room, and an exclamation of relief escaped his lips as he caught sight of Edmund. For the last few minutes he had feared the worst.

'Edmund, it is I,' he said, in a low voice.

No answer came. The young Count seemed to have noticed neither his words nor his approach. He was lying on the sofa with his face buried in the cushions, having, as it seemed, thus thrown himself down from sheer fatigue. His attitude betrayed that utter exhaustion which comes as a reaction after any great tension of mind or body.

'How could you cause us so much anxiety?' said Heideck reproachfully. 'Three times to-day have I knocked at your door in vain, and I have been compelled almost to force an entrance here.'

Again there was no reply. Edmund remained quite motionless. His uncle went nearer, and bent over him.

'Give me a word of answer, Edmund. You rushed away like a madman yesterday. There was no holding you back. I trust that you have grown calmer by now, and that you can at least listen to what I have to say. I have just come from your mother–'

The mention of this name seemed at length to produce some effect. Edmund shivered slightly, and sat up.

At sight of his countenance the Baron started back, scared and shocked.

'For God's sake, what ails you? How can you allow yourself to be so utterly overcome?'

The young man's features were indeed so changed as to be hardly recognisable. The misfortune which had befallen him seemed at one dire stroke to have taken from him all strength and courage. The dimmed look of his eyes and the complete prostration evident in voice and bearing told this plainly, as he replied:

'What is there for me yet to hear?'

'You know no details. Have you really no questions to put to me?'

'None.'

Heideck glanced uneasily at his nephew. A passionate outburst of feeling would have pleased him better than this numb listlessness. He sat down by Edmund and took his hand.

The young man offered no resistance; he seemed hardly to know what was going on about him.

'Yesterday I did all in my power to conceal the truth from you,' pursued the Baron; 'for I myself am perhaps not blameless in this unhappy business. I interfered in a somewhat arbitrary manner with the lives of two human beings, and the fault, if fault it were, has been cruelly avenged. My intentions were indeed of the best. I knew that the young officer to whom my sister was attached, and even secretly engaged, was as poor as herself. He had no fortune to offer her, he could not have married for years, and I had too sincere an affection for Constance to allow her to lose the bloom of her youth, to pine away in anxiety and sadness. When I separated her from her first love, and persuaded her to accept the hand of Count Ettersberg, I did so in the firm persuasion that her attachment had been a mere transient romance, a passing fancy, which marriage would cure at once and effectually. Could I have guessed what deep root the feeling had taken, I would not have interfered. It was only about a year later, when I heard that the regiment had been moved and quartered in the garrison-town nearest to Ettersberg, that I began to divine a danger, and my next visit here transformed the suspicion into a certainty. When the two met, their old love sprang up with fresh intensity, and developed into a passion which bore down all barriers before it. When I discovered this, when I stepped between them and forcibly recalled them to a sense of their duty, it … it was, I grieve to say, too late!'

He paused, and seemed to expect an answer. Edmund withdrew his hand from his uncle's grasp, and stood up.

'Go on,' he said, in a half-stifled voice.

'I have nothing more to add. With this separation all was over. I told you yesterday that the portrait was the portrait of a dead man. He fell the very next year, being one of the first victims of the war which then broke out. My sister never saw him again. Now you know the chain of events, and how it all happened; now try to regain composure. I can understand that it has been a terrible blow to you. You must accept it as a hard decree of Fate.'

'Yes, a hard decree,' repeated Edmund. 'You see that I succumb to it.'

'A man must not so easily succumb to life's first trouble,' said Heideck earnestly. 'You will learn to bear that which must be borne. But now exert yourself, and put from you this useless brooding over the unalterable, the irreparable. Will you not come with me to your mother?'

The young Count negatived the proposal with a hasty gesture.

'No, uncle. Do not ask that of me, not that!'

'Edmund, be reasonable. You cannot remain shut up in your rooms for ever.'

'I shall leave them to-day. In a couple of hours I shall start on a journey.'

'On a journey? Where do you mean to go?'

'To town, to Oswald.'

'To Oswald!' cried Heideck, bounding from his seat, and staring at his nephew as though he had not heard aright. 'Are you out of your senses?'

'Did you imagine that I should be the accomplice of this fraud?' burst forth Edmund, his unnatural calm suddenly merging into a fierce blaze of anger. 'Did you really think it possible that I should be silent and continue to play the master here, when the rightful heir is driven out, leading a life of privation and almost of poverty? If you two can do it, I cannot. How I am to bear the terrible existence before me, whether I shall be able to bear it at all, I know not. But this I do know. I must go to Oswald, must tell him that he has been cheated, defrauded, that Ettersberg is his of right. He shall hear it all; then … then it will matter little what becomes of me.'

Heideck had listened in mortal alarm. Whatever he may have feared, for this turn of affairs he certainly was not prepared. Were Edmund to learn that his cousin knew, or at least divined, the secret, an explanation between the two could no longer be prevented, and so the whole edifice would crash to pieces.

The uncle understood all the incalculable consequences of such a catastrophe better than his impetuous nephew, and he was resolved to prevent it at any price.

'You forget that you are not the only person concerned in this,' he said emphatically. 'Have you not thought whom the confession you propose making would disgrace and dishonour?'

Edmund recoiled, and the feverish glow which had overspread his features gave way to a livid pallor.

'Oswald has always been your mother's enemy,' continued Heideck. 'He has always hated her, and she has never deceived herself as to his sentiments. Will you really go to him–to him of all people, with a tale which will ruin her? What a triumph for him to see at length the woman he hates in the dust before him, to hear her own son–'

'Uncle, no more,' broke in Edmund, with a wild cry. 'I cannot bear it.'

'I should not have supposed you could hesitate a moment between your mother and Oswald,' said the Baron, frowning. 'But here there is really no alternative. You must yield to necessity.'

Edmund had thrown himself on to a chair, and hidden his face in his hands. A low groan escaped his overcharged breast.

'Do you think it has been a light thing for me to keep silence, and to aid and abet that which you call fraud?' asked his uncle, after a short pause. 'But I repeat, you have here no choice. The entailed estates are not transferable; they cannot be alienated from you. You must either remain Master of Ettersberg, or proclaim your secret to the world–in which case the honour of two houses, of Heideck as of Ettersberg, will be irretrievably lost. There is no other issue. I set this distinctly before my sister in years gone by, when she was on the point of owning all to her husband; now again I must call upon you to recognise it. You must be silent. If Oswald's future is sacrificed through our silence, we cannot help that. The family honour stands higher than his right.'

He spoke with iron firmness and composure, but this only lent more power to his words, and Edmund felt the truth that was in them. A desperate struggle was going on in the young man's breast, a struggle between his sense of justice and the stern necessity which was so forcibly demonstrated to him.

Oswald's query recurred to his mind. 'Suppose silence was imposed on you for the sake of the family honour?'

He was, indeed, far from attributing to his cousin's words any deeper significance, or from divining his knowledge of the truth. That conversation had come about most naturally. The young Count remembered in this hour how he had been fired with indignation at the bare notion that anyone could impute to his mother interested motives. How proudly and disdainfully had he declared that no shadow, no slur should attach itself to his life, that he must ever bear himself before the world with a clear conscience and unsullied brow! Two days ago he had held that language, and now....

Baron Heideck lost not a moment in pursuing his advantage. He had recourse to the last and most effectual weapon in his armoury.

'Now come with me to your mother,' he said, in a milder tone. 'You do not know how cruelly she has suffered since yesterday evening. She is waiting in terrible suspense for news of you, for a word from your lips. Come.'

Edmund passively allowed himself to be raised from his seat and led a few steps towards the door. There he halted suddenly.

'I cannot,' he said.

Heideck, who had thrown open the door, which had been locked on the inside, paid no attention to this protest, but endeavoured to draw his nephew from the room. The latter now resisted energetically.

'I cannot see my mother. Do not press me, uncle; do not try compulsion, or there will be a repetition of last night's scene.'

He freed himself from Heideck's grasp, and pulled the bell. Everard came in at once.

'My horse,' commanded his master. 'Have him saddled immediately.'

'Is this your reply to all that I have been saying to you? Has it all been in vain?' cried Heideck, in despair, when the man had withdrawn. 'Can you really still intend to take that journey?'

'No, I shall remain; but I must be out in the open air, or I shall stifle. Let me go, uncle.'

'First give me your word that you will do nothing rash, nothing desperate. In your present state, you are capable of any madness. What am I to say to your mother?'

'What you will. I have no other intention than to ride about the country for a couple of hours. Perhaps I shall be better then.'

With these words Edmund hurried away, his uncle making no further effort to stop him. He saw that neither persuasion nor soothing words of comfort could avail at present. Perhaps it would be well to let the storm spend itself.

Hour after hour passed. Noon came, then gradually dusk drew on, and still the young Count did not appear. At the castle the anxiety produced by his protracted absence grew with every minute. Baron Heideck reproached himself most bitterly for having allowed his nephew to leave him in so excited a frame of mind, but he was obliged to conceal his fears. He had to be strong, to think and act for his sister, whose brain seemed well-nigh to reel beneath the weight of dread and suspense. She wandered from room to room, from window to window, rejecting all her brother's attempts at encouragement with a mute, despairing gesture. Better than he, than anyone, she knew her son, and knew therefore what was to be feared.

'It really is useless for us to send messengers, Constance,' said Heideck, as he stood near her at the window. 'We have not even an approximate idea of the road Edmund took, and it only causes the servants to shake their heads and gossip more persistently. The young madman must have tired himself out by this time. Now that it is growing dark he is sure to turn homewards.'

'If he has not started on his journey after all,' whispered the Countess, whose eyes never once swerved from the avenue leading up to the castle.

'No,' replied Heideck decidedly. 'I made it evident to him that his confession would involve another, and who that other would be; we have nothing to fear on that score. He has certainly not gone to Oswald, but–'

He forebore to finish his speech, out of consideration to the Countess, but a great dread had seized upon him. Might not his nephew, by some despairing act, have sought a solution which would be worse, more cruel even than the threatened avowal to Oswald?

Another troubled pause ensued, another interval of painful silence, such as had frequently occurred that afternoon. Suddenly the Countess started up with a cry, and bent forward, far out of the window. Heideck, following her example, could discern nothing, but the mother's eye had already recognised the figure of her son, in spite of mist and gathering darkness. There he was–still distant, however–at the farther end of the avenue. The Countess's self-control now utterly forsook her. She did not remember that a plea of illness had been advanced for her to the servants: did not stay to consider how Edmund might receive her. She only wanted to see him; to have him with her again, and she rushed to meet him, so swiftly and impetuously that her brother could hardly follow her.

Outside in the vestibule they had a few minutes to wait, for the young Count, who had set off from home at a furious gallop, was returning at a snail's pace. The horse, fairly bathed in sweat, trembled in every limb; at length it halted before the door. The animal was evidently completely spent, and its rider seemed to be in the same condition. He, who usually would swing himself so lightly from the saddle, dismounted now slowly, almost laboriously, and it cost him a visible effort to ascend the few steps leading up to the entrance-hall.

The Countess stood on the very spot where some months before she had received her son on his return from his foreign travels. Then, radiant with the happiness of meeting her, he had rushed impetuously into her arms. Today he did not even notice that his mother was there. His clothes were saturated with rain, his damp hair clung to his brow, and he moved slowly forward, never looking round, but walking straight in towards the staircase.

'Edmund!'

It was a faint, trembling cry. Edmund turned, and beheld his mother standing close before him. She said not another word, but in her eyes he could read the misery, the anguish of the last few hours. And as she stretched forth her arms to him, he did not recoil, but stooped down to her. His lips met her forehead with a damp and icy touch, and in a whisper, audible to her alone, he said:

'Be at peace, mother. I will try and bear it for your sake.'

CHAPTER XII

Two months had now passed since Oswald had taken up his abode in the capital, where he had met with a most friendly welcome. His friend and patron, Councillor Braun, ranked among the first jurisconsults of that city, and this gentleman, happy to lend a helping hand to the son of his deceased friend, stood warmly by him, advancing his interests, and lending him all the assistance in his power. He comprehended and sympathized with this young man in the resolution he had taken. It was a worthy impulse, the old lawyer felt, which withdrew Oswald from a life of dependence, easy and brilliant though it might be in outward circumstances–a right feeling which made him prefer to work and struggle on alone, rather than to receive constant benefits from his relations, and submit, in return, to play a subordinate part through life.

Herr Braun and his wife were childless, and their young guest was received by them almost on the footing of a son. Oswald threw himself zealously into the work before him, and the approaching examination left him little leisure to ruminate on all that he had left at Ettersberg; still, it surprised him greatly that no news from the castle had reached him. Edmund had replied to his first long letter full of details by only a few lines, the style of which seemed strangely forced.

An excuse was offered for this brief note on the score of a maimed hand, the writer's wound being not yet healed. Oswald was still looking for a response to his second epistle, though weeks had elapsed since it had been despatched.

The young man knew full well that by the return of that picture the bridge of communication between himself and the Countess had been broken once and for all, that she would now use every effort to loose the bonds which bound him to her son; but it seemed impossible that Edmund should succumb so quickly and completely to her influence.

Thoughtless as the young Count often showed himself, his friendship for his cousin had ever been faithful and true. He could not have forgotten the friend of his youth in the course of a few short weeks. There must be something else that prevented his writing.

The first days of December had arrived. Oswald's examination was over; he had passed it brilliantly, and was desirous of at once entering upon his new career. But Councillor Braun declared decidedly that after the exertions of the last few weeks the young man stood in need of rest, that he must grant himself a respite, and remain on some little while longer as a guest in his house.

Half reluctantly Oswald yielded. He felt himself that he required a certain breathing-time after the constant study and strain, which had lasted since the preceding spring.

In that passionate struggle for independence he had made almost too great demands on his strength.

The great lawyer was in his consultation-room, where he had just completed the business of the day, when Oswald came in with a letter, which he placed on a pile of correspondence prepared for the post. It was about the hour when the servant generally collected and despatched it.

'Have you been writing to Ettersberg?' asked the old gentleman, looking up.

Oswald replied in the affirmative. He had conveyed to Edmund the news of his successful examination. An answer must come now at length, he thought; this protracted silence began to cause him some uneasiness.

'We were talking of the Ettersberg property here, not long ago,' said the lawyer. 'One of my clients intends to purchase timber from the estate to a large amount, and he consulted me as to one or two points in the bargain.'

Oswald's attention was roused at once. 'Purchase timber to a large amount? There must be some mistake. So much wood has been cut down of late years in the Ettersberg forests, that they now require great care and the nicest handling. My cousin is aware of this; he could not possibly have been persuaded into taking such a step.'

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. 'Nevertheless, I can assure you, it is as I say. My client does not treat with the Count himself, but with the bailiff. Of course, the man must be empowered to make such arrangements.'

'The bailiff will be leaving his situation shortly,' remarked Oswald. 'He received notice to quit in the summer, having proved himself flagrantly incompetent. He cannot, I should suppose, have been left in possession of the extended powers Baron Heideck conferred on him years ago. I imagined that Edmund would recall those when he took upon himself the management of his own affairs. Suppose such not to have been the case?'

'It would be an act of unpardonable negligence on the part of the young Count,' replied the lawyer. 'To leave for months powers such as these in the hands of a person whom he is about to dismiss, with whose services he is dissatisfied! Do you really think it possible?'

Oswald was silent. He well knew Edmund's heedlessness and indifference to all business matters, and was persuaded that he had left matters exactly as he had found them.

'The sum in question is an important one,' went on the lawyer, who understood his silence. 'Yet the price to be paid by the purchaser is a very low one, immediate payment in cash being demanded.'

'I think there must be something more here than a mere assumption of authority on the steward's part,' said Oswald uneasily. 'Hitherto he has been looked upon as an honest man, but the fact that he is about to lose his situation may tempt him to take fraudulent advantage of the means at his command. My cousin has certainly not given his consent to this bargain. Why, it would entail the devastation of his forests! I am convinced that he knows nothing at all about it.'

'That may be–but if the man's powers are not cancelled, he will have to recognise a transaction which is concluded in his name. You had better telegraph to Ettersberg, and inquire how the matter stands. Perhaps a timely warning may be of some avail.'