CHAPTER IX - THE PRICE OF THE RIVER FARM; IN WHICH VAINGLORY GOES
BEFORE A FALL
THE pistol had been practically fired. Under ordinary circumstances
the scene at the council table would have entirely exhausted Otto's
store both of energy and anger; he would have begun to examine and
condemn his conduct, have remembered all that was true, forgotten
all that was unjust in Seraphina's onslaught; and by half an hour
after would have fallen into that state of mind in which a Catholic
flees to the confessional and a sot takes refuge with the bottle.
Two matters of detail preserved his spirits. For, first, he had
still an infinity of business to transact; and to transact business,
for a man of Otto's neglectful and procrastinating habits, is the
best anodyne for conscience. All afternoon he was hard at it with
the Chancellor, reading, dictating, signing, and despatching papers;
and this kept him in a glow of self-approval. But, secondly, his
vanity was still alarmed; he had failed to get the money; to-morrow
before noon he would have to disappoint old Killian; and in the eyes
of that family which counted him so little, and to which he had
sought to play the part of the heroic comforter, he must sink lower
than at first. To a man of Otto's temper, this was death. He could
not accept the situation. And even as he worked, and worked wisely
and well, over the hated details of his principality, he was
secretly maturing a plan by which to turn the situation. It was a
scheme as pleasing to the man as it was dishonourable in the prince;
in which his frivolous nature found and took vengeance for the
gravity and burthen of the afternoon. He chuckled as he thought of
it: and Greisengesang heard him with wonder, and attributed his
lively spirits to the skirmish of the morning.
Led by this idea, the antique courtier ventured to compliment his
sovereign on his bearing. It reminded him, he said, of Otto's
father.
'What?' asked the Prince, whose thoughts were miles away.
'Your Highness's authority at the board,' explained the flatterer.
'O, that! O yes,' returned Otto; but for all his carelessness, his
vanity was delicately tickled, and his mind returned and dwelt
approvingly over the details of his victory. 'I quelled them all,'
he thought.
When the more pressing matters had been dismissed, it was already
late, and Otto kept the Chancellor to dinner, and was entertained
with a leash of ancient histories and modern compliments. The
Chancellor's career had been based, from the first off-put, on
entire subserviency; he had crawled into honours and employments;
and his mind was prostitute. The instinct of the creature served
him well with Otto. First, he let fall a sneering word or two upon
the female intellect; thence he proceeded to a closer engagement;
and before the third course he was artfully dissecting Seraphina's
character to her approving husband. Of course no names were used;
and of course the identity of that abstract or ideal man, with whom
she was currently contrasted, remained an open secret. But this
stiff old gentleman had a wonderful instinct for evil, thus to wind
his way into man's citadel; thus to harp by the hour on the virtues
of his hearer and not once alarm his self-respect. Otto was all
roseate, in and out, with flattery and Tokay and an approving
conscience. He saw himself in the most attractive colours. If even
Greisengesang, he thought, could thus espy the loose stitches in
Seraphina's character, and thus disloyally impart them to the
opposite camp, he, the discarded husband - the dispossessed Prince -
could scarce have erred on the side of severity.
In this excellent frame he bade adieu to the old gentleman, whose
voice had proved so musical, and set forth for the drawing-room.
Already on the stair, he was seized with some compunction; but when
he entered the great gallery and beheld his wife, the Chancellor's
abstract flatteries fell from him like rain, and he re-awoke to the
poetic facts of life. She stood a good way off below a shining
lustre, her back turned. The bend of her waist overcame him with
physical weakness. This was the girl-wife who had lain in his arms
and whom he had sworn to cherish; there was she, who was better than
success.
It was Seraphina who restored him from the blow. She swam forward
and smiled upon her husband with a sweetness that was insultingly
artificial. 'Frederic,' she lisped, 'you are late.' It was a scene
of high comedy, such as is proper to unhappy marriages; and her
APLOMB disgusted him.
There was no etiquette at these small drawing-rooms. People came
and went at pleasure. The window embrasures became the roost of
happy couples; at the great chimney the talkers mostly congregated,
each full-charged with scandal; and down at the farther end the
gamblers gambled. It was towards this point that Otto moved, not
ostentatiously, but with a gentle insistence, and scattering
attentions as he went. Once abreast of the card-table, he placed
himself opposite to Madame von Rosen, and, as soon as he had caught
her eye, withdrew to the embrasure of a window. There she had
speedily joined him.
'You did well to call me,' she said, a little wildly. 'These cards
will be my ruin.'
'Leave them,' said Otto.
'I!' she cried, and laughed; 'they are my destiny. My only chance
was to die of a consumption; now I must die in a garret.'
'You are bitter to-night,' said Otto.
'I have been losing,' she replied. 'You do not know what greed is.'
'I have come, then, in an evil hour,' said he.
'Ah, you wish a favour!' she cried, brightening beautifully.
'Madam,' said he, 'I am about to found my party, and I come to you
for a recruit.'
'Done,' said the Countess. 'I am a man again.'
'I may be wrong,' continued Otto, 'but I believe upon my heart you
wish me no ill.'
'I wish you so well,' she said, 'that I dare not tell it you.'
'Then if I ask my favour?' quoth the Prince.
'Ask it, MON PRINCE,' she answered. 'Whatever it is, it is
granted.'
'I wish you,' he returned, 'this very night to make the farmer of
our talk.'
'Heaven knows your meaning!' she exclaimed. 'I know not, neither
care; there are no bounds to my desire to please you. Call him
made.'
'I will put it in another way,' returned Otto. 'Did you ever
steal?'
'Often!' cried the Countess. 'I have broken all the ten
commandments; and if there were more to-morrow, I should not sleep
till I had broken these.'
'This is a case of burglary: to say the truth, I thought it would
amuse you,' said the Prince.
'I have no practical experience,' she replied, 'but O! the good-
will! I have broken a work-box in my time, and several hearts, my
own included. Never a house! But it cannot be difficult; sins are
so unromantically easy! What are we to break?'
'Madam, we are to break the treasury,' said Otto and he sketched to
her briefly, wittily, with here and there a touch of pathos, the
story of his visit to the farm, of his promise to buy it, and of the
refusal with which his demand for money had been met that morning at
the council; concluding with a few practical words as to the
treasury windows, and the helps and hindrances of the proposed
exploit.
'They refused you the money,' she said when he had done. 'And you
accepted the refusal? Well!'
'They gave their reasons,' replied Otto, colouring. 'They were not
such as I could combat; and I am driven to dilapidate the funds of
my own country by a theft. It is not dignified; but it is fun.'
'Fun,' she said; 'yes.' And then she remained silently plunged in
thought for an appreciable time. 'How much do you require?' she
asked at length.
'Three thousand crowns will do,' he answered, 'for I have still some
money of my own.'
'Excellent,' she said, regaining her levity. 'I am your true
accomplice. And where are we to meet?'
'You know the Flying Mercury,' he answered, 'in the Park? Three
pathways intersect; there they have made a seat and raised the
statue. The spot is handy and the deity congenial.'
'Child,' she said, and tapped him with her fan. 'But do you know,
my Prince, you are an egoist - your handy trysting-place is miles
from me. You must give me ample time; I cannot, I think, possibly
be there before two. But as the bell beats two, your helper shall
arrive: welcome, I trust. Stay - do you bring any one?' she added.
'O, it is not for a chaperon - I am not a prude!'
'I shall bring a groom of mine,' said Otto. 'I caught him stealing
corn.'
'His name?' she asked.
'I profess I know not. I am not yet intimate with my corn-stealer,'
returned the Prince. 'It was in a professional capacity - '
'Like me! Flatterer!' she cried. 'But oblige me in one thing. Let
me find you waiting at the seat - yes, you shall await me; for on
this expedition it shall be no longer Prince and Countess, it shall
be the lady and the squire - and your friend the thief shall be no
nearer than the fountain. Do you promise?'
'Madam, in everything you are to command; you shall be captain, I am
but supercargo,' answered Otto.
'Well, Heaven bring all safe to port!' she said. 'It is not
Friday!'
Something in her manner had puzzled Otto, had possibly touched him
with suspicion.
'Is it not strange,' he remarked, 'that I should choose my
accomplice from the other camp?'
'Fool!' she said. 'But it is your only wisdom that you know your
friends.' And suddenly, in the vantage of the deep window, she
caught up his hand and kissed it with a sort of passion. 'Now go,'
she added, 'go at once.'
He went, somewhat staggered, doubting in his heart that he was over-
bold. For in that moment she had flashed upon him like a jewel; and
even through the strong panoply of a previous love he had been
conscious of a shock. Next moment he had dismissed the fear.
Both Otto and the Countess retired early from the drawing-room; and
the Prince, after an elaborate feint, dismissed his valet, and went
forth by the private passage and the back postern in quest of the
groom.
Once more the stable was in darkness, once more Otto employed the
talismanic knock, and once more the groom appeared and sickened with
terror.
'Good-evening, friend,' said Otto pleasantly. 'I want you to bring
a corn sack - empty this time - and to accompany me. We shall be
gone all night.'
'Your Highness,' groaned the man, 'I have the charge of the small
stables. I am here alone.'
'Come,' said the Prince, 'you are no such martinet in duty.' And
then seeing that the man was shaking from head to foot, Otto laid a
hand upon his shoulder. 'If I meant you harm,' he said, 'should I
be here?'
The fellow became instantly reassured. He got the sack; and Otto
led him round by several paths and avenues, conversing pleasantly by
the way, and left him at last planted by a certain fountain where a
goggle-eyed Triton spouted intermittently into a rippling laver.
Thence he proceeded alone to where, in a round clearing, a copy of
Gian Bologna's Mercury stood tiptoe in the twilight of the stars.
The night was warm and windless. A shaving of new moon had lately
arisen; but it was still too small and too low down in heaven to
contend with the immense host of lesser luminaries; and the rough
face of the earth was drenched with starlight. Down one of the
alleys, which widened as it receded, he could see a part of the
lamplit terrace where a sentry silently paced, and beyond that a
corner of the town with interlacing street-lights. But all around
him the young trees stood mystically blurred in the dim shine; and
in the stock-still quietness the upleaping god appeared alive.
In this dimness and silence of the night, Otto's conscience became
suddenly and staringly luminous, like the dial of a city clock. He
averted the eyes of his mind, but the finger rapidly travelling,
pointed to a series of misdeeds that took his breath away. What was
he doing in that place? The money had been wrongly squandered, but
that was largely by his own neglect. And he now proposed to
embarrass the finances of this country which he had been too idle to
govern. And he now proposed to squander the money once again, and
this time for a private, if a generous end. And the man whom he had
reproved for stealing corn he was now to set stealing treasure. And
then there was Madame von Rosen, upon whom he looked down with some
of that ill-favoured contempt of the chaste male for the imperfect
woman. Because he thought of her as one degraded below scruples, he
had picked her out to be still more degraded, and to risk her whole
irregular establishment in life by complicity in this dishonourable
act. It was uglier than a seduction.
Otto had to walk very briskly and whistle very busily; and when at
last he heard steps in the narrowest and darkest of the alleys, it
was with a gush of relief that he sprang to meet the Countess. To
wrestle alone with one's good angel is so hard! and so precious, at
the proper time, is a companion certain to be less virtuous than
oneself!
It was a young man who came towards him - a young man of small
stature and a peculiar gait, wearing a wide flapping hat, and
carrying, with great weariness, a heavy bag. Otto recoiled; but the
young man held up his hand by way of signal, and coming up with a
panting run, as if with the last of his endurance, laid the bag upon
the ground, threw himself upon the bench, and disclosed the features
of Madame von Rosen.
'You, Countess!' cried the Prince.
'No, no,' she panted, 'the Count von Rosen - my young brother. A
capital fellow. Let him get his breath.'
'Ah, madam. . .' said he.
'Call me Count,' she returned, 'respect my incognito.'
'Count be it, then,' he replied. 'And let me implore that gallant
gentleman to set forth at once on our enterprise.'
'Sit down beside me here,' she returned, patting the further corner
of the bench. 'I will follow you in a moment. O, I am so tired -
feel how my heart leaps! Where is your thief?'
'At his post,' replied Otto. 'Shall I introduce him? He seems an
excellent companion.'
'No,' she said, 'do not hurry me yet. I must speak to you. Not but
I adore your thief; I adore any one who has the spirit to do wrong.
I never cared for virtue till I fell in love with my Prince.' She
laughed musically. 'And even so, it is not for your virtues,' she
added.
Otto was embarrassed. 'And now,' he asked, 'if you are anyway
rested?'
'Presently, presently. Let me breathe,' she said, panting a little
harder than before.
'And what has so wearied you?' he asked. 'This bag? And why, in
the name of eccentricity, a bag? For an empty one, you might have
relied on my own foresight; and this one is very far from being
empty. My dear Count, with what trash have you come laden? But the
shortest method is to see for myself.' And he put down his hand.
She stopped him at once. 'Otto,' she said, 'no - not that way. I
will tell, I will make a clean breast. It is done already. I have
robbed the treasury single-handed. There are three thousand two
hundred crowns. O, I trust it is enough!'
Her embarrassment was so obvious that the Prince was struck into a
muse, gazing in her face, with his hand still outstretched, and she
still holding him by the wrist. 'You!' he said at last. 'How?' And
then drawing himself up, 'O madam,' he cried, 'I understand. You
must indeed think meanly of the Prince.'
'Well, then, it was a lie!' she cried. 'The money is mine, honestly
my own - now yours. This was an unworthy act that you proposed.
But I love your honour, and I swore to myself that I should save it
in your teeth. I beg of you to let me save it' - with a sudden
lovely change of tone. 'Otto, I beseech you let me save it. Take
this dross from your poor friend who loves you!'
'Madam, madam,' babbled Otto, in the extreme of misery, 'I cannot -
I must go.'
And he half rose; but she was on the ground before him in an
instant, clasping his knees. 'No,' she gasped, 'you shall not go.
Do you despise me so entirely? It is dross; I hate it; I should
squander it at play and be no richer; it is an investment, it is to
save me from ruin. Otto,' she cried, as he again feebly tried to
put her from him, 'if you leave me alone in this disgrace, I will
die here!' He groaned aloud. 'O,' she said, 'think what I suffer!
If you suffer from a piece of delicacy, think what I suffer in my
shame! To have my trash refused! You would rather steal, you think
of me so basely! You would rather tread my heart in pieces! O,
unkind! O my Prince! O Otto! O pity me!' She was still clasping
him; then she found his hand and covered it with kisses, and at this
his head began to turn. 'O,' she cried again, 'I see it! O what a
horror! It is because I am old, because I am no longer beautiful.'
And she burst into a storm of sobs.
This was the COUP DE GRACE. Otto had now to comfort and compose her
as he could, and before many words, the money was accepted. Between
the woman and the weak man such was the inevitable end. Madame von
Rosen instantly composed her sobs. She thanked him with a
fluttering voice, and resumed her place upon the bench, at the far
end from Otto. 'Now you see,' she said, 'why I bade you keep the
thief at distance, and why I came alone. How I trembled for my
treasure!'
'Madam,' said Otto, with a tearful whimper in his voice, 'spare me!
You are too good, too noble!'
'I wonder to hear you,' she returned. 'You have avoided a great
folly. You will be able to meet your good old peasant. You have
found an excellent investment for a friend's money. You have
preferred essential kindness to an empty scruple; and now you are
ashamed of it! You have made your friend happy; and now you mourn
as the dove! Come, cheer up. I know it is depressing to have done
exactly right; but you need not make a practice of it. Forgive
yourself this virtue; come now, look me in the face and smile!'
He did look at her. When a man has been embraced by a woman, he
sees her in a glamour; and at such a time, in the baffling glimmer
of the stars, she will look wildly well. The hair is touched with
light; the eyes are constellations; the face sketched in shadows - a
sketch, you might say, by passion. Otto became consoled for his
defeat; he began to take an interest. 'No,' he said, 'I am no
ingrate.'
'You promised me fun,' she returned, with a laugh. 'I have given
you as good. We have had a stormy SCENA.'
He laughed in his turn, and the sound of the laughter, in either
case, was hardly reassuring.
'Come, what are you going to give me in exchange,' she continued,
'for my excellent declamation?'
'What you will,' he said.
'Whatever I will? Upon your honour? Suppose I asked the crown?'
She was flashing upon him, beautiful in triumph.
'Upon my honour,' he replied.
'Shall I ask the crown?' she continued. 'Nay; what should I do with
it? Grunewald is but a petty state; my ambition swells above it. I
shall ask - I find I want nothing,' she concluded. 'I will give you
something instead. I will give you leave to kiss me - once.'
Otto drew near, and she put up her face; they were both smiling,
both on the brink of laughter, all was so innocent and playful; and
the Prince, when their lips encountered, was dumbfoundered by the
sudden convulsion of his being. Both drew instantly apart, and for
an appreciable time sat tongue-tied. Otto was indistinctly
conscious of a peril in the silence, but could find no words to
utter. Suddenly the Countess seemed to awake. 'As for your wife -
' she began in a clear and steady voice.
The word recalled Otto, with a shudder, from his trance. 'I will
hear nothing against my wife,' he cried wildly; and then, recovering
himself and in a kindlier tone, 'I will tell you my one secret,' he
added. 'I love my wife.'
'You should have let me finish,' she returned, smiling. 'Do you
suppose I did not mention her on purpose? You know you had lost
your head. Well, so had I. Come now, do not be abashed by words,'
she added somewhat sharply. 'It is the one thing I despise. If you
are not a fool, you will see that I am building fortresses about
your virtue. And at any rate, I choose that you shall understand
that I am not dying of love for you. It is a very smiling business;
no tragedy for me! And now here is what I have to say about your
wife; she is not and she never has been Gondremark's mistress. Be
sure he would have boasted if she had. Good-night!'
And in a moment she was gone down the alley, and Otto was alone with
the bag of money and the flying god.
