The Baron's Sons Part 39

The tormented victim of the headache had employed the last hours of his tenure of office in causing one hundred and twenty of the chief prisoners under his care to be tried and sentenced with the utmost expedition. They were condemned to death, but he exercised his right of pardon, and set them all free, without exception. He thus, as he had vowed in his hour of torment, took ample revenge--not on the accused, but on the minister who was about to remove him from office.

He issued a wholesale pardon. "Now let the minister, in his zeal for milder methods, outdo me if he can!" he exclaimed, as he threw down his pen.

Richard had been summoned before the judge-advocate immediately after receiving the unexpected announcement of his pardon.

"You are set free, it is true," said the high official; "yet for a time you are not allowed to live in Hungary, but are ordered to make your home in some city of the empire outside your own country. Let us say Vienna, for example. The governor, who has to-day given you your liberty, wishes you to call on the young Baroness Alfonsine Plankenhorst, upon your arrival at Vienna, and thank her for her good offices in securing your liberation. Without her intervention you would not so soon have left your prison cell. So give her your heartiest thanks."

"I shall not fail to do so," was the reply.

"And one thing more: your brother Eugen, or odon, as you call him, has paid the penalty of his treason with his life--"

"Yes, I know it," interrupted the other; "but I am puzzled how the German and the Hungarian names--"

Here he was sharply cut short. "In the first place," said the judge-advocate, sternly, "it was against all rules and regulations for you to hear anything about it, since you were a prisoner, and communication with a prisoner is treason. In the second place, I did not ask you for a lecture on philology; you are here to attend to what I have to say." Therewith he took a little pasteboard box out of a drawer. "Your brother left you a lock of his hair, which I now deliver to you."

Richard opened the box. "But this is not--" he began, in great surprise, when the other again shut him off.

"I have nothing more to say to you. Good morning."

With this, the released prisoner was shown to the door. A little more, and he would have blurted out his astonishment at finding blond hair in the little box, whereas odon's hair was dark.

Hastening to the railway station, Richard caught the early train to Vienna, and so made the journey all but in Alfonsine's company. She, however, took her seat in a first-cla.s.s compartment, while he, as a poor released prisoner, contented himself with a third-cla.s.s seat. And while the young lady was revelling in her supposed revenge, only a few yards away sat the object of her hatred, puzzling his brain over three baffling riddles. The first was: "What is the meaning of the blond lock of hair, and why _Eugen_ Baradlay instead of _Edmund_?" The second: "How is it that I am indebted to Alfonsine Plankenhorst for my freedom?" And the third: "Where shall I find Edith, and when I find her what is to be my next step?"

He could solve neither of the three riddles.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE SUITOR.

Richard entered the Plankenhorst house with the ease and freedom of a man visiting old friends. He did not note the expression of amazement and terror--as if at sight of a ghost--with which the mother and daughter stared at him. He had eyes only for Edith, who, beside herself with joy, sprang to embrace him, stammering as she lay on his bosom: "Richard, is it really you?"

The baroness was the first to regain her composure. "Edith," said she severely, turning to her niece, "I cannot understand your immodest behaviour toward this gentleman. What do you wish, sir?" she asked coldly of Richard.

The young man advanced to Alfonsine and addressed her in words of sincere grat.i.tude and friendliness. "First of all," he began, "it was to pay a debt of heartfelt grat.i.tude that I hastened hither this morning. At daybreak I was to have been executed as a condemned criminal, but at the last moment I was pardoned. The governor, in remitting my sentence and setting me free, enjoined upon me as my first duty to pay you, my dear young lady, my sincere thanks for my freedom. Without your intervention I should have been sentenced to at least fifteen years' imprisonment. Accept, I beg you, my warmest thanks for your kind act."

Every one of his words was a crus.h.i.+ng blow on the viper's head. Did he thank her, Alfonsine Plankenhorst, for his liberation, he whose destruction had been the end and aim of all her strivings for weeks and months past, and the sweet vision of her nightly dreams?

Her mother, whose self-control was greater than her own, was forced to come to her aid.

"My dear sir," said she to Richard, "there must be some mistake here.

The service which you ascribe to my daughter cannot have been rendered by any member of my family, for the simple reason that we have not concerned ourselves with your affairs in the slightest degree. We live in strict retirement, meet no one, never meddle in politics, and our drawing-rooms are closed to society. This last I beg leave to emphasise for your benefit."

"I understand you perfectly, madam, and I can a.s.sure you that this is the last time I shall intrude upon you. A few words more and I have done. You will remember that a year and a half ago I became engaged to your niece--"

"An engagement which, of course, must now be considered as broken off," interrupted the baroness. "When you asked for my niece's hand you were an officer in the army, a man of property, and a n.o.bleman.

Now, however, you are neither."

"But I am still Richard Baradlay," returned the young man, with dignity.

"And free as a bird!" added the other, scornfully. "But it so happens that the other party to the engagement is not equally free. Miss Edith Liedenwall is bound to comply with the wishes of her relatives on whom she is dependent, and they consider it their duty to discountenance her engagement to Mr. Richard Baradlay. She feels, too, that she has a perfect right to break the engagement and choose again more wisely."

"I beg to ask Miss Liedenwall whether that is so?"

Edith shook her head, but did not venture to speak.

Her aunt was bent on settling the matter once for all. "Edith will do as we think best for her," said she. "We are not only ent.i.tled, but in duty bound, to make wise provision for her future. You, sir, are now too late with your wooing. We provided for her while you were still in prison and little likely ever to see your freedom. My niece is promised to another."

Edith started from her chair. "Your niece will give her hand only to the man she loves," she declared, firmly.

"Edith," commanded her aunt, without losing her composure, "let us not have a scene, if you please. You are my foster-daughter and I have a lawful right to demand obedience of you."

"I will not be your foster-daughter any longer," cried the young lady, a.s.serting herself resolutely; "I will go into service, for which I have been trained in your house. As chambermaid or kitchen girl I can give my hand to whom I choose."

"You will not be allowed to execute your threat, my dear," returned the baroness calmly. "You are under very good care here, and things will take their orderly and proper course until you are called upon to kneel at the altar; and should you choose to weep while pledging your vows there, your tears would be merely regarded as a fitting accompaniment to the solemn ceremonial."

"But I should not weep," cried the girl, excitedly; "I should do something very different. If you really found a man who consented to marry me to please you and against my will, I should say to him, before he led me to the altar, that I once ran away from a convent,--ran away in the night and made my way to the camp where my lover was, in whose room I pa.s.sed half the night. Some of his comrades, as well as the market-woman in Singer Street, saw me there, and all the nuns in the St. Bridget Convent know about it. Sister Remigia knows that I ran away and where I was. The marks of the punishment I received the next day are still visible. And now, madam, do you wish another than the man for whom I bear those scars to see them?"

Pa.s.sionate scorn and maidenly indignation spoke in the girl's every look and gesture. Richard was struck dumb with admiration. The baroness fairly choked with amazement and impotent wrath. Of what she had just heard she had entertained not the slightest suspicion. She felt her self-control and will-power slipping away from her in the determined girl's presence; yet she made one last attempt to carry her point.

"You wretched girl!" she cried, clasping her hands and turning her eyes heavenward; "alas, that you should have so far forgotten yourself! Do you know that you have fallen a victim to an unprincipled seducer? This man here whom you claim to be your betrothed is already married to another woman, who, of course, has rights that take precedence of yours, and who will drive you from his side with reviling and insult."

"I--married already?" gasped Richard, in amazement.

"Yes, you!" retorted the baroness. "Or do you choose to deny that you have a son in Pest over whom you watch with tender care, whose education you pay for, and whom you sent to the hospital when he was ill? Deny that, sir, if you can!"

"So you drag a poor innocent child into our unfortunate quarrel," said Richard.

"The child is innocent, but not its father," returned the accuser, pointing her finger at Richard.

"Very well, madam, I will tell you the story of this child. It happened not long ago that I mortally wounded a brave opponent in battle. This man summoned me to him in his dying hour and told me he had, somewhere in the world, a son whom he had long sought in vain, but traces of whom he had recently discovered. The mother had abandoned the child. He begged me to promise that I would find the boy, and I did so, a.s.suring him that I would care for the poor waif as tenderly as if he were my own brother's child. Accordingly, I prosecuted the search and was at last successful. I have in my possession certain letters and other papers which establish the child's ident.i.ty and parentage."

Baroness Plankenhorst and her daughter were trembling in every limb and seemed powerless to utter a word. Meanwhile the speaker went on, standing proudly erect as he proceeded:

"But I promised my dying adversary never to betray the mother's name to any one, and you may rest a.s.sured I never shall."

Edith approached her lover and said, with great gentleness: "Whoever the mother may be of the child to which you have promised to be a father, I will be its mother." And she leaned fondly on his breast and rested her head on his shoulder.

Her aunt, vanquished and prostrate, raised her hand as if in malediction and muttered hoa.r.s.ely:

"Take her then and begone, in the devil's name!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.