The Goose Girl by Harold MacGrath (online e book reading txt) 📕

as bright and glowing as coals. He waited. He had made the slip without premeditation; but what was done was done. So he waited.

Hermann dropped his hands on the table and leaned forward.

"Is it you, Hans, and I did not know you?"

"It is I, brother."

"My God!" Hermann sank down weakly. The ceiling spun and the gaslight separated itself into a hundred flames. "You said he was dead!"

"So I am, to the world, to you, and to all who knew me," quietly.

"Why have you returned?"

Hans shrugged. "I don't know. Perhaps I am a fool; perhaps I am willing to pay the penalty of my crime. At least that was uppermost in my mind till I learned that her highness had been found."

"Hans, Hans, the duke has sworn to hang you!"

Hans laughed. "The rope is not made that will fit my neck. Will you denounce me, brother?"

"I?" Hermann shrank back in horror.

"Why not? Five thousand crowns still hang over me."

"Blood-money for me? No, Hans!"

"Besides, I have made a will. At my death you will be rich."

"Rich?"

"Yes, Hermann. I am worth two hundred thousand crowns."

Hermann breathed with effort. So many things had beaten upon his brain in the past ten minutes that he was dazed. His brother Hans alive and here, and rich?

"But riches are not everything."

"Sometimes they are little enough," Hans agreed.

"Why did you do it?" Hermann's voice was full of agony.

"Have I not told you, Hermann? There is nothing more to be added." Then, with rising passion: "Nothing more, now that my heart is blistered and scarred with regret and remorse. God knows that I have repented and repented. I went to war because I wanted to be killed. They shot me here, and here, and here, and this saber-cut would have split the skull of any other man. But it was willed that I should come back here."

"My poor brother! You must fly from here at once!"

"From what?" tranquilly.

"The chancellor is suspicious."

"I know that. But since you, my brother, failed to identify me, certainly his excellency will not. I shall make no slip as in your case. And you will not betray me when I tell you that I have returned principally to find out whence came those thousand crowns."

"Ah! Find that out, Hans; yes, yes!" Hermann began to look more like himself. "But what was your part?"

"Mine? I was to tell where her highness and her nurse were to be at a certain hour of the day. Nothing more was necessary. My running away was the expression of my guilt; otherwise they would never have connected me with the abduction."

"Have you any suspicions?"

"None. And remember, you must not know me, Hermann, no matter where we meet. I am sleepy." Hans rose.

And this, thought Hermann, his bewilderment gaining life once more, and this calm, unruffled man, whose hair was whiter than his own, a veteran of the bloodiest civil war in history, this prosperous mechanic, was his little brother Hans!

"Hans, have you no other greeting?" Hermann asked, spreading out his arms.

The wanderer's face beamed; and the brothers embraced.

"You forgive me, then, Hermann?"

"Must I not, little Hans? You are all that is left me of the blood. True, I swore that if ever I saw you again I should curse you."

The two stood back from each other, but with arms still entwined.

"Perhaps, Hans, I did not watch you closely enough in those days."

"And what has become of the principal cause?"

"The cause?"

"Tekla."

"Bah! She is fat and homely and the mother of seven squalling children."

"What a world! To think that Tekla should be at the bottom of all this tangle! What irony! I ruin my life, I break the heart of the grand duke, I nearly cause war between two friendly states-why? Tekla, now fat and homely and the mother of seven, would not marry me. The devil rides strange horses."

"Good night, Hans."

"Good night, Hermann, and God bless you for your forgiveness. Always come at night if you wish to see me, but do not come often; they might remark it."

A rap on the door startled them. Hans, a finger of warning on his lips, opened the door. Carmichael stood outside.

"Ah, Captain!" Hans took Carmichael by the hand and drew him into the room.

Carmichael, observing Hermann, was rather confused as to what to do.

"Good evening, Hermann," he said.

"Good evening, Herr Carmichael."

Hermann passed into the hail and softly closed the door after him. It was better that the American should not see the emotion which still illumined his face.

"What's the good word, Captain?" inquired Hans.

Carmichael put in a counter-query: "What was your brother doing here?"

"I have told him who I am."

"Was it wise?"

"Hermann sleeps soundly; he will talk neither in his sleep nor in his waking hours. He has forgiven me."

"For what?" thoughtlessly.

"The time for explanations has not yet come, Captain."

"Pardon me, Grumbach; I was not thinking. But I came to bring you the invitation to the military ball."

The broad white envelope, emblazoned with the royal arms, fascinated Hans, not by its resplendency, but by the possibilities which it afforded.

"Thank you; it was very good of you."

"It was a pleasure, comrade. What do you say to an hour or two at the Black Eagle? We'll drown our sorrows together."

"Have you any sorrows, Captain?"

"Who hasn't? Life is a patchwork with the rounding-out pieces always missing. Come along. I'm lonesome to-night."

"So am I," said Hans.

The Black Eagle was lively as usual; and there were some familiar faces. The vintner was there and so was Gretchen. Carmichael hailed her.

"This is my last night here, Herr Carmichael," she said.

"Somebody has left you a fortune?" There was a jest in Carmichael's eyes.

"Yes," replied Gretchen, her lips unsmiling.

"The poor lady who lived on the top floor of my grandmother's house was rich. She left me a thousand crowns."

Carmichael and Grumbach: "A thousand crowns!"

"And what will you do with all that money?" asked Hans.

"I am going to study music."

"I thought you were going to be married soon," said Carmichael.

"Surely. But that will not hinder. I shall have enough for two." Gretchen saw no reason why she should tell them of the princess' generosity.

"But how does he take it?" asked Carmichael, with a motion of his head toward the vintner, half hidden behind a newspaper.

"He doesn't like the idea at all. But the Herr Direktor says that I am a singer, and that some day I shall be rich and famous."

"When that day comes I shall be there with many a brava!"

The vintner, who sat near enough to catch a bit of the conversation, scowled over the top of his paper. Carmichael eyed him mischievously. Gretchen picked up her coppers and went away.

"A beautiful girl," said Hans abstractedly. "She might be Hebe with no trouble at all."

Carmichael admired Hans. There was always some new phase in the character of this quiet and unassuming German. A plumber who was familiar with the classics was not an ordinary person. He raised his stein and Hans extended his. After that they smoked, with a word or two occasionally in comment.

At that day there was only one newspaper in Dreiberg. It was a dry and solid sheet, of four pages, devoted to court news, sciences, and agriculture. The vintner presently smoothed down the journal, opened his knife, and cut out a paragraph. Carmichael, following his movements slyly, wondered what he had seen to interest him to the point of preservation. The vintner crushed the remains of the sheet into a ball and dropped it to the floor. Then he finished his beer, rose, and proceeded toward the stairs leading to the rathskeller below. Down these he disappeared.

An idea came to Carmichael. He called a waitress and asked her to bring a copy of that day's paper. Meantime he recovered the vintner's paper, and when he finally put the two together, it was a simple matter to replace the missing cutting. Grumbach showed a mild interest over the procedure.

"Why do you do that, Captain?"

"A little idea I have; it may not amount to anything." But the American was puzzled over the cutting. There were two sides to it: which had interested the vintner? "Do you care for another beer?"

"No, I am tired and sleepy, Captain."

"All right; we'll go back to the hotel. There is nothing going on here to-night."

But Carmichael was mistaken for once.

A little time later Herr Goldberg harangued his fellow socialists bitterly. Gretchen's business in this society was to serve. They had selected her because they knew that she inclined toward the propaganda. Few spoke to her, outside of giving orders, and then kindly.

The rathskeller had several windows and doors. These led to the Biergarten, to the wine-cellar, and to an alley which had no opening on the street. The police had as yet never arrested anybody; but several times the police had dispersed Herr Goldberg and his disciples on account of the noise. The window which led to the blind alley was six feet from the floor, twice as broad as it was high, and unbarred. Under this window sat the vintner. He was a probationer, a novitiate; this was his second attendance. He liked to sit in the shadow and smile at Herr Goldberg's philosophy, which, summed up briefly, meant that the rich should divide with the poor and that the poor should hang on to what they had or got. It may have never occurred to Herr Goldberg that the poor were generally poor because of their incapabilities, their ignorance, and incompetence. To-night, however, there were variety and spice with his Jeremiad.

"Brothers, shall this thing take place? Shall the daughter of Ehrenstein become Jugendheit's vassal? Oh, how we have fallen! Where is the grand duke's pride we have heard so much about? Are we, then, afraid of Jugendheit?"

"No!" roared his auditors, banging their stems and tankards. The vintner joined the demonstration, banging his stein as lustily as the next one.

"Have you thought what this marriage will cost us in taxes?"

"What?"

"Thousands of crowns, thousands! Do we not always pay for the luxuries of the rich? Do not their pleasures grind us so much deeper into the dirt? Yes, we are the corn they grind. And shall we submit, like the dogs in Flanders, to become beasts of burden?"

"No, no!"

"I have a plan, brothers; it will show the duke to what desperation he has driven us at last. We will mob the Jugendheit embassy on the day of the wedding; we will tear it apart, brick by brick, stone by stone."

"Hurrah!" cried the noisy ones. They liked talk of this order. They knew it was only here that great things happened, the division of riches and mob-rule. Beer was cheaper by the keg.

The noise subsided. Gretchen spoke.

"Her serene highness will not marry the king of Jugendheit."

Every head swung round in her direction.

"What is that you say?" demanded Herr Goldberg.

Gretchen repeated her statement. It was