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

better than my honor!"

"Take care, nephew!" came Prince Ludwig's warning. "Some one else is near."

"I care not! Before all the world I would gladly proclaim it. I love her. I swear that I shall never marry, that my heart is breaking! Gretchen, Gretchen! My God, she is falling! Help her!" wildly; and he shook the bars with supernatural strength till his hands were bleeding.

But Gretchen did not answer.


CHAPTER XXI

TWIN LOCKETS


Carmichael tramped about his room, restless, uneasy, starting at sounds. Half a dozen times his cigar had gone out, and burned matches lay scattered on the floor. He was waiting for Grumbach and his confrères. Now he looked out of a window, now he spun the leaves of a book, now he sat down, got up, and tramped again. Anything but this suspense. A full day! The duel in the Biergarten; the king of Jugendheit and the prince regent in the Stein-schloss; the flight of the ambassador to the palace, more like a madman than one noted for his calm and circumspection; Gretchen carried into the palace in a dead faint, and her highness weeping; the duke in a rage and brought over only after the hardest struggle Carmichael had ever experienced. And deeper, firmer, became his belief and conviction that Grumbach's affair vitally concerned her highness. What blunder had been made? He would soon know. He welcomed the knock on his door. Grumbach came in, carrying under his arm a small bundle. He was pale but serene, like a man who had put his worldly affairs in order.

"Well, Captain, what did his Highness say?"

"Where are your companions?"

"They are waiting outside."

"The duke agrees. He will give us an audience at eight-thirty. I had a time of it!"

"Did you mention my name

"No. I went roundabout. I also obtained his promise to say nothing to Herbeck till the interview was over. Again he demurred, but his curiosity saved the day. Now, Hans, the full story."

Grumbach spread out on the bed the contents of the bundle.

"Look at these and tell me what you see, Captain."

Carmichael inspected the little yellow shoes. He turned them over and over in his hand. He shook out the folds of the little cloak, and the locket fell on the bed.

"When did you get this?" he cried excitedly. "It is her highness'!"

"So it is, Captain; but I have carried it about me all these years."

"What?"

"Yes, Captain. Count von Herbeck is a great statesman, but he made a terrible mistake this time. Listen. As sure as we are in this room together, I believe that she whom we call the princess is not the daughter of the grand duke."

Carmichael sat down on the edge of the bed, numb and without any clear idea where he was. From the stony look on his face, Grumbach might have carried the head of Medusa in his hand. The blood beat into his head with many strange noises. But by and by the world became clearer and brighter till all things took on the rosal tint of dawn. Free! If she was not a princess, she was free, free!

The duke allowed the quartet to remain standing for some time. He strode up and down before them, his eyes straining at the floor, his hands behind his back. He was in fatigue-dress, and only the star of Ehrenstein glittered on his breast. He was never without this order. All at once he whirled round, and as a sailor plunges the lead into the sea, so he plumbed the very deeps of their eyes as if he would see beforehand what strange things were at work in their souls. "I do not recognize any of these persons," he said to Carmichael.

"Your highness does not recognize me, then?" asked the clock-mender.

"Come closer," commanded the duke. The clock-mender obeyed. "Take off those spectacles." The duke scanned the features, and over his own came the dawn of recollection. "Your eyes, your nose-Arnsberg, here and alive? Oh, this is too good to be true!" The duke reached out toward the bell, but Carmichael interposed.

"Your highness will remember," he warned.

"Ha! So you have trapped me blindly? I begin to understand. Who is this fellow Grumbach? Did I offer immunity to him?"

"I am Hans Breunner, Highness, and I ask for nothing."

"Breunner? Breunner? Hans Breunner, brother of Hermann, and you put yourself into my hands?" The tone developed into a suppressed roar. The duke took hold of Hans by the shoulders and drew him close. "You dog! So you ask for nothing? It shall be given to you. To-morrow morning I shall have you shot! Hans Breunner! God is good to me this night! Thanks, Herr Carmichael, a thousand thanks! And I need not ask who that damnable scoundrel is who has the black face and heart of a Gipsy. When I recollect what I have suffered at your hands! If only the late king were here, my joy would be complete!"

"Your Highness," said Von Arnsberg quietly, "all I have left in the world are these two withered hands, and may God cut them off if they ever wronged you in any act. I am innocent. Those letters purported to have been written by me were forgeries. I could not prove this, so I have been outlawed, with the sentence of death over my head. But to-night I shall leave this palace a free man, and you shall ask pardon for the wrong you have done me."

There was no fear in the voice; there was nothing but confidence. The duke glared at the speaker somberly, recalling what Herbeck had often said.

"What you say still remains to be proved. Now, what is at the bottom of all this?" was the demand. "You men have not obtained this interview for the sake of affirming your innocence. Herr Carmichael, here, declared to me on honor that you were in possession of a great secret. Out with it, without any more useless recrimination."

Hans replied not in words but in actions. He crossed the room to the duke's desk and spread out his treasures under the flickering candlelight. The duke, with a cry of terror, sprang toward the secret drawer. His first thought was that the shoes and cloak, upon which only his eyes ever rested now, had been stolen. He straightened. Nothing was missing. He glanced from face to face, from the articles on the desk to those in the drawer. He was overwhelmed. But he steadied himself; it was no moment for physical weakness. Slowly, ignoring every one, he came back to the desk and fingered the locket. Just then it was exceedingly quiet in the room, save that each man heard the quick breathing of his neighbor. The duke opened the locket, looked long and steadfastly at the portrait, and shut it. Then he went to the drawer again and returned with the counterparts. He laid them side by side. The likeness was perfect in all details.

"Carmichael," he said, "will you please help me? My eyes are growing old. Do I see these things, or do I not? And if I do, which is mine, and what does this signify?" The tremor in his voice was audible.

Grumbach answered. "This, Highness. I took these from the little princess with my own hands. They have never been out of my keeping. Those you have I know nothing about."

The duke rubbed his eyes. "My daughter?"

"The Princess Hildegarde is not your daughter, Highness," said Hans solemnly.

"Gott!" The duke smote the desk in despair, a despair which wrung the hearts of those who witnessed it. "Herbeck! I must send for Herbeck!"

"Not yet, Highness; later," Grumbach said.

"But if not Hildegarde-I believe I must be growing mad!"

"Patience, your Highness!" said Carmichael.

"Patience!" wearily. "You say patience when my heart is dying inside my breast? Patience? Who, then, is this woman I have called my child?"

"God knows, Highness!" Hans stood bowed before this parental agony.

"But what proof have you that she is not? What proof, I say?"

"Would there be two lockets, Highness?"

"More proof than this will be needed. Produce it. Prolong this agony of doubt not another instant."

"Speak," said Hans to the Gipsy, who was viewing the drama with the nonchalance of a spectator rather than a participant.

"Highness," said the Gipsy, bowing, "he speaks truly. He came with us. For fear that the little highness might be recognized as we traveled, we changed her clothes. He took them, together with the locket. One day the soldiers appeared in the distance. We all fled. We lost the little highness, and none of us ever knew what became of her. She wore the costume of my own children."

"We shall produce that in time," said Von Arnsberg.

"Damnable wretch!" said the duke, addressing the Gipsy.

The other shrugged. He had been promised immunity; that was all he cared about, unless it was the bag of silver and gold this old clock-mender had given him a few hours gone.

"I am summoning her highness," said the duke, as he struck the bell.

"And, Highness," added Grumbach, "despatch some one for Gretchen, who lives at number forty the Krumerweg."

"The goose-girl? What does she know? Ah, I remember. She is even now with her highness. I shall send for them both."

Gretchen? Carmichael's bewilderment increased. What place had the goose-girl in this tragedy?

"Now, while we are waiting," resumed the duke, his agitation somewhat under control, "the proof, the definite proof!"

"Her highness stumbled one night," said Hans, "and fell upon the fire. I snatched her back, but not before her left arm was badly burned."

The Gipsy nodded. "I saw it, Highness."

And that was why Grumbach went to the military ball with opera-glasses! Carmichael was round-eyed. But Gretchen?

"The Princess Hildegarde has no scar upon either arm," continued Grumbach. "I have seen them. They are without a single flaw."

"More than that," reiterated the duke. "That is not enough."

They became silent. Now and then one or the other stirred. The duke never took his eyes off the door through which her highness would enter.

She came in presently, tender with mercy, an arm supporting Gretchen, who was red-eyed and white.

"You sent for us, father?"

How the word pierced the duke's heart! "Yes, my child," he answered; for it mattered not who she was or whither she had come, he had grown to love her.

"I am sorry you sent for Gretchen," said Hildegarde. "She is ill."

Gretchen sighed. To her the faces of the men were indistinct. And, besides, she was without interest, listless, drooped.

"My child, will you roll up your left sleeve?" said the duke.

"My sleeve?" Hildegarde thoughtfully looked round. Roll up her sleeve? What possessed her father?

"Do so at once."

"I can not roll up this sleeve, father," blushing and a trifle angry at so strange a request.

Hans opened his knife and laid bare her left arm. She uttered a little angry cry. "How dare you?" She tried to cover the arm.

"Let me look at it, Hildegarde," requested the duke.

To him she presented her arm, for she now understood that a serious affair was in progress. But there was neither mole nor scar upon the round and lovely arm.

"Why do you do this, father? What is the meaning?"

No one answered; no one had