The Serapion Brethren Volume Ii Part 12

Cyprian saw this, and was not a little concerned at what he had done.

"The truth is," he said, "that I had not thought about our friend's having only recently recovered, and hardly that, from a severe illness.

I was acting contrarily to my own fundamental principle, which totally prohibits the perpetration of jokes of this description, because it has often happened that the terrible serious reality of the spirit-world has come gripping in into jokes of this kind, resulting in very terrific things. I remember, for instance----"

"Stop! stop!" cried Lothair. "I can't have any more interruptions.

Cyprian is on the point of carrying us away, after his manner, into that dark world of spells where he is at home. Please to go on with your story, Ottmar." Ottmar went on reading.

And in came a man, dressed in black from top to toe, with a pallid face, and a set, serious expression. He went up to Madame von G.

with the most courtly bearing of a man of the highest rank, and in well-selected terms, begged her to pardon him for having been so long in arriving, though his invitation was of such old standing--but that, to his regret, he had been detained by having to pay an unavoidable visit first. Madame von G., unable to recover all in a moment from the start which his entry had caused her, murmured a few indistinguishable words, which seemed to amount to saying, would the stranger be kind enough to take a seat. He drew a chair close to her, and opposite to Angelica, sat down, and let his eyes pa.s.s over every member of the company. Every one felt paralysed; none could utter a word. Then the stranger began to speak, saying that he felt he stood doubly in need of excuses; firstly, for arriving at such a time, and, secondly, for having made his entrance in such a sudden manner, and so startlingly.

The latter, however, he was not to blame for, inasmuch as the door had been thrown open in that violent manner by the servant whom he had found in the hall. Madame von G., overcoming with difficulty the eery feeling with which she was seized, inquired whom she had the honour of welcoming. The stranger seemed not to notice this question, his attention being fixed on Marguerite, who had suddenly become changed in all her ways and bearing, kept tripping and dancing close up to the stranger, and telling him, with constant t.i.ttering and laughter, and with much volubility, in French, that they had all been in the very thick of the most delightful ghost-stories, and that Captain Moritz had just been saying that some evil spectre ought to make its appearance at the very instant when he had come in. Madame von G., feeling all the awkwardness of having to ask this stranger, who had said he came by invitation, as to his name and so forth, but more distressed and rendered uncomfortable by his presence, did not repeat her question, but reprimanded Marguerite for her behaviour, which almost pa.s.sed the limits of the "_convenable_." The stranger put a stop to Marguerite's chatter, turning to the others, and leading the conversation to some event of indifference which had happened in the neighbourhood. Madame von G. answered him. Dagobert tried to join in the conversation, which soon dragged painfully along in detached, interrupted sentences; and during this, Marguerite kept trilling couplets of French chansons, and seemed to be trying steps, as if remembering the "tours" of the newest gavotte, while the others were scarcely capable of moving. They all felt their b.r.e.a.s.t.s oppressed; the presence of the stranger weighed upon them like the sultry oppressiveness which precedes a thunderstorm. The words died on their lips when they looked at the deathly pale face of this uncanny guest. The markedly foreign accent with which he spoke both French and German indicated that he was neither a German nor a Frenchman.

Madame von G. breathed freely, with an enormous sense of relief, when at length horses were heard drawing up at the door, and the voice of her husband, Colonel von G., was distinguishable.

When the Colonel came in, and saw the stranger, he went up to him quickly, saying, "Heartily welcome to my house, dear Count." Then turning to his wife, he said, "This is Count S., a very dear friend of mine; I made his acquaintance in the north, but met him afterwards in the south."

Madame von G., whose anxiety began to be relieved, a.s.sured the Count, with pleasant smiles, that it was only because her husband had omitted to tell her of his visit that he had been received perhaps a little strangely, and not as a welcome friend ought to have been. Then she told the Colonel how the conversation had been running all the evening upon the supernatural; how Moritz had been telling a dreadful story of events which had happened to him and a friend of his, and that, at the very moment when he had been saying, "There came a tremendous crash,"

the door had flown open, and the Count had come in.

"Very good indeed," said the Colonel, laughing; "they thought you were a ghost, dear Count! I fancy I see traces of alarm and nervousness about Angelica's face still, and Moritz looks as though he had scarcely shaken off the excitement of the story he was telling. Even Dagobert does not seem quite in his ordinary spirits. Really, Count, it is a little too bad to take you for a _revenant_; don't you think so?"

"Perhaps," the Count replied; "I really may have something more or less ghostly about me. A good deal is being said nowadays, about people who, by virtue of some peculiar psychical quality, possess the power of influencing others, so that they experience very remarkable effects. I may be endowed with such a power."

"You are not serious, my dear Count," said Madame von G. "But there is no doubt that people are discovering very wonderful mysteries nowadays."

"People are pampering their curiosity, and weakening their minds over nursery tales and absurd fancies," was the Count's reply. "We ought all to take care not to allow ourselves to be infected by this curious epidemic. However, I interrupted this gentleman at the most interesting point of his story, and as none of his hearers would like to lose the finale, the explanation of the mystery, I would beg him to go on with it."

To Captain Moritz this stranger Count was not only uncomfortable and uncanny, but utterly repugnant, in all the depths of his being. In his words he found--all the more that he gave them out with a most irritating, self-satisfied smile--something indescribably contemptuous and insulting; and he replied, in an irritated tone, and with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, that he feared his nursery tales might interfere with the pleasantness--the sense of enjoyment--which the Count had introduced into the circle, so that he would prefer to say no more.

The Count seemed scarcely to notice what Moritz said. Playing with the gold snuff-box which he had taken in his hand, he asked Madame von G---- if the "lively" young lady was French. He meant Marguerite, who kept dancing about the room, trilling. The Colonel went up to her and asked her, half aloud, if she had gone out of her senses. Marguerite slunk, abashed, to the tea-table, and sat down there quite quiet. The Count now took up the conversation, and spoke, in an entertaining manner, of this and the other events which had recently happened.

Dagobert was scarcely able to put in a word. Moritz stood, red as fire, with gleaming eyes, as if waiting eagerly for the signal of attack.

Angelica appeared to be completely immersed in the piece of feminine "work" at which she had set herself to labour. She did not raise an eyelid. The company separated in complete discomfort.

"You are a fortunate man," Dagobert cried, when he and Moritz were alone together. "Doubt no longer that Angelica is much attached to you.

Clearly did I read in her eyes to-day that she is devotedly in love with you. But the devil is always busy, and sows his poisonous tares amongst the blooming wheat. Marguerite is on fire with an insane pa.s.sion. She loves you with all the wild, pa.s.sionate pain which only a fiery temperament is capable of feeling. The senseless way in which she behaved tonight was the effect of an irresistible outbreak of the wildest jealousy. When Angelica let fall the handkerchief--when you took it up and gave it to her--when you kissed her hand--the furies of h.e.l.l possessed that poor Marguerite. And you are to blame for that. You used formerly to take the greatest pains to pay every kind of attention to that very beautiful French girl. I know well enough that it was only Angelica whom you had in your mind. Still, those falsely directed lightnings struck, and set on fire. And now the misfortune is there; and I do not know how the matter will end without terrible tumult and trouble."

"Marguerite be hanged (if I may use such an expression)," said Moritz.

"If Angelica loves me--and ah! I can't believe, quite, that she does--I am the happiest and the most blest of men, and care nothing about all the Marguerites in the world, nor their foolishnesses neither. But another fear has come into my mind. This uncanny, stranger Count, who came in amongst us like some dark, gloomy mystery--doesn't he seem to place himself, somehow, most hostilely between her and me? I feel, I scarce know how, as if some reminiscence came forward out of the dark background--I could almost describe it as a dream--which reminiscence, or dream, whichever it may be, brings this Count to my memory under terrible circ.u.mstances of some sort. I feel as though, wherever he makes his appearance, some awful misfortune must come flas.h.i.+ng out of the depths of the darkness as a result of his conjurations. Did you notice how often his eyes rested on Angelica, and how, when they did, a feeble flush tinted his pallid cheeks, and disappeared again rapidly?

The monster has designs upon my darling; and that is why the words which he addressed to me sounded so insulting. But I will oppose him and resist him to the very death!"

Dagobert said the Count was a supernatural sort of fellow, no doubt, with something very eery and spectral about him, and that it would be as well to keep a sharp look-out on his proceedings, though, perhaps, he thought there was less in, or behind, him than one would suppose; and that the uncanny feelings which everybody had experienced with regard to him were chiefly attributable to the excited state in which they had all been when he made his appearance. "Let us face all this disquieting affair," said Dagobert, "with firm courage and unshakable confidence. No dark power will bend the head which holds itself up with true bravery and indomitable resolution."

A considerable time had elapsed. The Count, whose visits to the Colonel's house increased in frequency, had rendered himself almost indispensable. It was universally agreed, now, that the accusation against him of being uncanny recoiled on those who made it. "He might very well have styled us uncanny people, with our white faces and odd behaviour," as said Madame von G----. Everything he said evinced a store of the most valuable and various information; and although, being an Italian, he spoke with a foreign accent, his command of the German language was most perfect and fluent. His narratives had a fire which bore the hearers irresistibly along, so that even Moritz and Dagobert, hostile as were their feelings to this stranger, forgot their repugnance to him when he talked, and when a pleasant smile broke out over his pale, but handsome and expressive face, and they hung upon his lips, like Angelica and the others.

The Colonel's friends.h.i.+p with him had arisen in a way which proved him to be one of the n.o.blest-minded of men. Chance had brought them together in the far north, and there the Count, in the most unselfish and disinterested manner, came to the Colonel's aid in a difficulty in which he found himself involved, which might have had the most disastrous consequences to his fortune, if not to his good name and honour. Deeply sensible of all that he owed him, the Colonel hung on him with all his soul.

"It is time," the Colonel said to his wife one day when they were alone together, "that I should tell you the princ.i.p.al reason why the Count is here. You remember that he and I, when we were in P----, four years ago, grew more and more intimate and inseparable, so that at last we occupied two rooms which opened one into the other. He happened to come into my room one morning early, and he saw the little miniature of Angelica, which I had with me, lying on my writing-table. As he looked more and more closely at it, he lost his self-command in a strange way.

Not able to answer me, he kept gazing at it. He could not take his eyes from it. He cried out excitedly that he had never seen a more beautiful creature--had never before known what love was--it was now blazing up in the depths of his heart. I jested about the extraordinary effect of the picture on him--called him a second Kalaf, and congratulated him on the fact that my good Angelica was not a Turandot. At last I told him pretty clearly that at his time of life--for, though not exactly elderly, he could not be said to be a very young man--this romantic way of falling in love with a portrait rather astonished me. But he vowed most vehemently--nay, with every mark of that pa.s.sionate excitement, almost verging on insanity, which belongs to his country--that he loved Angelica inexpressibly, and, if he were not to be dashed into the profoundest depths of despair, I must allow him to gain her affection and her hand. It is for this that the Count has come here to our house.

He fancies he is certain that she is not ill-disposed to him, and he yesterday laid his formal proposal before me. What do you think of the affair?"

Madame von G---- could not explain why his latter words shot through her being like some sudden shock. "Good heavens," she cried, "_that_ Count for our Angelica! that utter stranger!"

"Stranger!" echoed the Colonel with darkened brow; "the Count a stranger! the man to whom I owe my honour, my freedom, nay, perhaps my life! I know he is not quite so young as he has been, and perhaps is not altogether suited to Angelica in point of age; but he is of high lineage, and rich, very rich."

"And without asking Angelica," said Madame von G----. "Very likely she may not have any such liking for him as he, in his fondness, imagines."

The Colonel started from his chair, and placed himself in front of her with gleaming eyes. "Have I ever given you cause to imagine," he said, "that I am one of those idiotic, tyrannical fathers who force their daughters to marry against their inclinations, in a disgraceful way?

Spare me your absurd romanticisms and sentimentalities. Marriages may be made without any such extraordinary, fanciful love at first sight, and so forth. Angelica is all ears when he talks; she looks at him with most kindly favour; she blushes like a rose when he kisses her hand, which she willingly leaves in his. And that is how an innocent girl expresses that inclination which truly blesses a man. There is no occasion for any of that romantic love which so often runs in your s.e.x's heads in such a disturbing fas.h.i.+on."

"I have an idea," said Madame von G----, "that Angelica's heart is not so free as, perhaps, she herself imagines it is."

"Nonsense," cried the Colonel, and was on the point of breaking out in a pa.s.sion, when the door opened, and Angelica came in, with the loveliest smile of the most ingenuous simplicity. The Colonel, at once losing all his irritation, went to her, took her hand, kissed her on the brow, and sat down close beside her. He spoke of the Count, praising his n.o.ble exterior, intellectual superiority, character, and disposition; and then asked her if she thought she could care for him.

She answered that at first he had appeared very strange and eery to her, but that now those feelings had quite disappeared, and that she liked him very much.

"Heaven be thanked then!" cried the Colonel. "Thus it was ordained to turn out, for my comfort, for my happiness. Count S--- loves you, my darling child, with all his heart. He asks for your hand, and you won't refuse him." But scarcely had he uttered those words when Angelica, with a deep sigh, sank back as if insensible. Her mother caught her in her arms, casting a significant glance at the Colonel, who gazed speechless at the poor child, who was as pale as death. But she recovered herself; a burst of tears ran down her cheeks, and she cried, in a heart-breaking voice, "The Count! the terrible Count! oh, no, no; never, never!"

As gently as possible the Colonel asked her why it was that the Count was so terrible to her. Then Angelica told him that at the instant when he had said that the Count loved her, that dream which she dreamt four years before, on the night before her fourteenth birthday--from which she awoke in such deadly terror without being able to remember the images or incidents of it in the very slightest--had come back to her memory quite clearly.

"I thought," she said, "I was walking in a beautiful garden where there were strange bushes and flowers which I had never seen the like of before. Suddenly I found myself close before a wonderful tree with dark leaves, large flowers, and a curious perfume something like that of the elder. Its branches were swaying and making a delicious rustling, and it seemed to be making signs inviting me to rest under its shade.

Irresistibly impelled by some invisible power, I sank down on the gra.s.s which was under the tree. Then strange tones of complaint or lamenting seemed to come through the air, stirring the tree like the touch of some breeze; and it began to utter sighs and moans. And I was seized by an indescribable pain and sorrow; a deep compa.s.sion arose in my heart, I could not tell why. Then, suddenly, a burning beam of light darted into my breast, and seemed to break my heart in two. I tried to cry out, but the cry could not make its way from my heart, oppressed with a nameless anguish--it became a faint sigh. But the beam which had pierced my heart was the gleam of a pair of eyes which were gazing on me from under the shade of the branches. Just then the eyes were quite close to me; and a snow-white hand became visible, describing circles all round me. And those circles kept getting narrower and narrower, winding round me like threads of fire, so that, at last, the web of them was so dense and so close that I could not move. At the same time I felt that the frightful gaze of those terrible eyes was a.s.suming the mastery over my inmost being, and utterly possessing my whole existence and personality. The one idea to which it now clung, as if to a feeble thread, was, to me, a martyrdom of death-anguish. But the tree bent down its blossoms towards me, and out of them spoke the beautiful voice of a youth, which said, 'Angelica! I will save you--I will save you--but----'"

Angelica was interrupted. Captain von P---- was announced. He came to see the Colonel on some matter of duty. As soon as Angelica heard his name she cried out with the bitterest sorrow, in such a voice as bursts only from a breast wounded with the deepest love-anguish--while tears fell down her cheeks--"Moritz! oh, Moritz!"

Captain von P---- heard those words as he came in; he saw Angelica, bathed in tears, stretch out her hands to him. Like a man beside himself he dashed his forage cap to the ground, fell at Angelica's feet, caught her in his arms, as she sank down overwhelmed with rapture and sorrow, and pressed her fervently to his heart.

The Colonel contemplated this little scene in speechless amazement.

Madame von G---- said: "I thought this was how it was; but I was not sure!"

"Captain von P----," said the Colonel angrily, "what is there between you and my daughter?"

Moritz, quickly recovering himself, placed Angelica--more dead than alive--gently down on the couch, picked up his cap, advanced to the Colonel with a face red as fire, and eyes fixed on the ground, and declared that he loved Angelica unutterably; but that, upon his honour, until that moment, not a word approaching to a declaration of his feelings had crossed his lips. He had been but too seriously doubtful as to its being possible that Angelica could return his love. He said it was only at this moment--which he could not possibly have antic.i.p.ated--that the bliss accorded to him by heaven had been fully disclosed to him; and that he trusted he should not be repulsed by the n.o.blest hearted of mankind, the tenderest of fathers, when he implored him to bestow his blessing on a union sealed by the purest and sincerest affection.

The Colonel gazed at Moritz, and then at Angelica, with looks of gloom; then he paced up and down with folded arms like one who strives to arrive at a resolution. He paused before his wife, who had taken Angelica in her arms and was whispering to her words of consolation.

"What," he inquired, "has this silly dream of yours to do with Count----?"

Angelica threw herself at his feet, kissed his hands, bathed them in her tears, and said, half-audibly, "Oh, father! dearest father! those terrible eyes which mastered my whole being were the Count's eyes. It was his spectral hand which wove round me those meshes of fire. But the voice of comfort which spoke to me out of the perfumed blossoms of the wondrous tree, was the voice of Moritz--my Moritz!"

"Your Moritz!" cried the Colonel, turning so quickly that he nearly threw Angelica down. He continued, speaking to himself in a lower tone: "Thus a father's wise resolve, and the offer of a grand and n.o.ble gentleman, are to be cast to the winds, for the sake of childish imaginations, and a clandestine love affair." And he walked up and down as before. At last, addressing Moritz, he said--

"Captain von P----, you know very well what a high opinion of you I have. I could not have wished for a better son-in-law. But I have promised my daughter to Count S----, to whom I am bound by the deepest obligations by which one man can be bound to another. At the same time, please do not suppose that I am going to play the part of the obstinate and tyrannical father. I shall hasten to the Count at once. I shall tell him everything. Your love will be the cause of a cruel difference between me and this gentleman. It may cost me my life. No matter; it can't be helped. Wait here till I come back."

Moritz warmly declared that he would sooner face death a hundred times than that the Colonel should run the very slightest risk; but the Colonel hurried away without reply.

As soon as he had gone, the lovers fell into each other's arms, and vowed unalterable fidelity. Angelica said that it was not until her father told her of the Count's views with regard to her, that she felt, in the depths of her soul, how unspeakably precious and dear Moritz was to her, and that she would rather die than marry any one else. Also that she had felt certain for a long time, that he loved her just as deeply. Then they both bethought themselves of all the occasions when they had given any betrayal of their love for each other; and, in short, were in a condition of the highest enjoyment and blissfulness, like two children, forgetting all about the Colonel and his anger and opposition. Madame von G----, who had long watched the growth of this affection, and approved of Angelica's choice with all her heart, promised, with deep emotion, to leave no stone unturned to prevent the Colonel from entering into an alliance which she abhorred, without precisely knowing why.

When an hour or so had pa.s.sed, the door opened and, to the surprise of all, Count S---- came in, followed by the Colonel, whose eyes were gleaming. The Count went up to Angelica, took her hand, and looked at her with a smile of bitter pain. Angelica shrank, and murmured almost inaudibly, "Oh! those eyes!"

"You turn pale, Mademoiselle," said the Count, "just as you did when first I came into this house. Do you truly look upon me as a terrible spectre? No, no; do not be afraid of me, Angelica. I do but love you with all the fervour and pa.s.sion of a younger man. I had no knowledge that you had given away your heart, when I was foolish enough to make an offer for your hand. Even your father's promise does not give me the slightest claim to a happiness which it is yours alone to bestow. You are free, Mademoiselle. Even the sight of me shall no longer remind you of the moments of sadness which I have caused you. Soon, perhaps to-morrow, I shall go back to my own country."

"Moritz! My Moritz!" Angelica cried in the utmost joy and delight, and threw herself on her lover's breast. The Count trembled in every limb; his eyes gleamed with an unwonted fire, his lips twitched convulsively; he uttered a low inarticulate sound. But turning quickly to Madame von G---- with some indifferent question, he succeeded in mastering his emotion.