Fickle Fortune

'Well, where is he?' asked the mother, accustomed always to be her son's first thought.

'In his room,' stammered Everard. 'Herr von Ettersberg was at the door when the carriage drove up, and he helped the Count to mount the stairs.'

'Helped him upstairs?' The Countess's face blanched to a deadly pallor. 'What do you mean by that? Has anything happened?'

'I fear so, my lady,' said the old retainer hesitatingly. 'The groom said something about an accident out shooting. A gun was accidentally discharged, and the Count was wounded.'

He could not tell his tale at length, for the Countess sprang up with a cry of alarm. Asking no question, listening to no further word, the agonized mother rushed into the antechamber, whence a corridor led direct to her son's room.

The old servant, who had completely lost his head and was as terrified as his mistress, would have rushed after her; but just at that moment Oswald entered the boudoir by an opposite door.

'Where is my aunt?' he asked hastily.

'With the Count by this time, I think,' said Everard, pointing in the direction she had taken. 'My lady was so shocked when I told her about the accident, she hastened to him at once.'

Oswald frowned. 'How could you be so imprudent!' he said, with an impatient gesture. 'The Count's wound is not at all serious. I came myself to assure my aunt that there is not the smallest cause for anxiety.'

'Thank God, thank God!' breathed Everard, with a great sigh of relief. 'The groom was saying–'

'The groom has grossly exaggerated the affair,' Oswald interrupted him. 'Your master is very slightly injured–wounded in the hand, nothing more. It was quite unnecessary to alarm the Countess in this way. Go now and let Baron Heideck know the true state of the case, that he may not be startled in like manner by the news of some dangerous injury.'

Everard withdrew to fulfil his mission, and Oswald was about to leave the room, when his eyes, wandering with a casual and indifferent glance towards the writing-table, fell on the small case which lay thereon.

Curiosity did not rank among Oswald's failings, and he would have thought it impertinent to examine even that which lay open to view in his aunt's room. But now he was misled by a very pardonable error. Only the day before he had begged the Countess to make over to him a portrait of his father, which had been in the possession of the late Count Ettersberg, and was, no doubt, still to be found among his personal belongings. Now that he was leaving the old home, Oswald wished to take this souvenir with him, and the Countess had been quite willing to accede to his wish, promising to look for the portrait. It appeared, so he said to himself, that she had been successful in her quest.

In this certain presumption, Oswald took up the picture. He had but a dim remembrance of it, and really did not know if it were enclosed in a frame or in a case. The faded appearance of the little étui seemed to confirm his belief, so he opened it.

The case contained a portrait, certainly–a miniature painted on ivory–but it was not the one he sought. At the first glance Oswald started, surprised in the highest degree.

'Edmund's likeness!' he murmured, under his breath. 'Strange that I should never have seen it before. Besides, he has never worn uniform, to my knowledge.'

With ever-increasing astonishment he examined first the miniature, which so unmistakably portrayed the young Count's features, and then the old-fashioned and discoloured case wherein it had evidently long lain enclosed. He had alighted on an enigma.

'What can it mean? The portrait is an old one. That is plain from its colouring, and from the shape of the case–yet it represents Edmund as he now appears. To be sure, it is not quite like him, it has an expression, a look which is not his, and … Ah!'

This exclamation burst from his lips with sudden vehemence. In an instant the young man's eyes were opened. With the vividness of lightning, the truth flashed upon him, the perception of all that was, and had been. The enigma was solved. Hastily he strode up to a life-size portrait of Edmund, an oil-painting which hung in the Countess's boudoir, and with the open case in his hand, began comparing the two, feature by feature, line by line.

Lines and features proved identical; there were the same dark hair and eyes, but with a difference, a marked difference of expression. The resemblance to Edmund was so extraordinary that he might have sat for the miniature, and yet the face depicted in it was not his, but another's. Another's, differing from the young Count's most essentially, as a prolonged examination abundantly showed.

'So I was right!' said Oswald, in a low hoarse tone. 'Right in my suspicion after all!'

There was neither triumph nor malicious satisfaction in his tone. On the contrary, it conveyed a certain unfeigned horror; but as he caught sight of the secret compartment now standing open, every other feeling was merged in sudden, bitter anger.

'Yes,' he murmured. 'She hid it well–so well, that no eyes but hers would ever have beheld it, had not her mortal fear on Edmund's account for once robbed her of all prudence and power of reflection. To think that it should fall into my hands! This surely is more than a mere accident. I think'–here Oswald drew himself up to a proud and menacing attitude–'I think I have a right to ask whom this picture represents, and I shall retain possession of it until an answer to my plain question be given me.'

So saying, he thrust the little case into his breast-pocket, and quickly left the room.

The alarming report which Everard had conveyed to the Countess turned out to be a most exaggerated one. The accident that had befallen Edmund was of no serious importance. While scrambling through, or over, a hedge, his gun had been accidentally discharged, but fortunately the shot had only grazed his left hand. The injury was very slight, hardly deserving to be called a wound, yet the whole castle was in commotion about it. Baron Heideck hastened to his nephew's room, and the Countess could find neither rest nor peace until the doctor, sent for in post-haste, had assured her positively there was no cause for uneasiness, and that the lesion would be healed in a few days.

Edmund himself took the matter most lightly. He laughed and joked with his mother about her anxiety until it yielded beneath his cheery influence, protested strongly against being treated as a disabled man, and was with difficulty prevailed on to listen to the doctor, who prescribed absolute rest and quiet.

Evening closed in. Oswald was alone in his own room, which he had not left since his great discovery of the morning. The lamp burning on the table threw but a partial light over the apartment, which was large and rather sombre at night, with its heavy leather hangings and deep bay-window. The furniture was massive and good, as in every room throughout the house, but it had not been renewed for years, and was in strong contrast to the bright and handsome appointments of the main building, and especially of that part of it dedicated to the young Count's use. The nephew, the offshoot of a younger branch, had been banished to a distant wing. In this, as in all else, his inferiority to the heir must be well marked; he must stand back, yielding the precedence to the master of the house.

So the Countess had ordered it, and the temper of Oswald's mind was such that under no circumstances could he have brought himself to seek aid or protection from Edmund, or to complain to him of the constant mortifications to which he was subjected.

The side-table was strewn with letters and papers which Oswald had intended to set in order before leaving. Now he gave them not a thought. With restless steps he paced to and fro in the room, the excessive pallor of his countenance and his heaving breast telling of the terrible agitation that reigned within him. The dim tormenting doubt which had beset his soul for years, the vague presentiment which he had driven from him only by the full exercise of his powerful will, now stood revealed as truth. Though the actual course events had taken and the story of that portrait were as yet unknown to him, the always-recurring suspicions had resolved themselves into a certainty, calling up within him a perfect storm of contradictory emotions.

Oswald paused before the writing-table, and again took up the fatal portrait which lay there among the papers.

'After all, what avails this?' he said bitterly. 'I indeed, for my own part, require no further proof, but all corroboration is wanting, and the one person who could afford it will certainly keep silence. She would die rather than make a confession which would bring ruin on herself and on her son, and I cannot compel her to speak–I must not, could not, offer up the honour of our name, even though it be a question of the heirship of Ettersberg. Yet full and complete knowledge I must have–I must, cost what it may.'

He slowly closed the case and laid it down again, still standing before it, musing profoundly, moodily.

'Perhaps there might be a way, one single way. If I were to go to Edmund with this picture, and were to call upon him to explain, to inquire into the facts of the case, he could force the truth from his mother if he seriously set himself to the task, and he would so set himself if once I introduced the suspicion to his mind. I know him well enough to be sure of that. But what a terrible blow it would be to him–to him, with his sensitive notions of honour, with his candid, open nature, which has never condescended to a lie. To be hurled suddenly from a position which, in the fulness of his happiness and prosperity, must appear absolutely safe; to be branded as the instrument, perhaps the accomplice, of a fraud!–I think the knowledge of this would kill him.'

Love for the friend of his youth stirred in his breast, regaining all its old force and fervour, but with it awoke other and hostile emotions which clamoured to be heard. They recalled to him the deep-dyed treachery of which he had been the victim, and as he vacillated still, sought to influence him by counsels such as these:

'Will you really keep silence, and eschew the revenge which Fate has placed in your hands? Will you go hence with sealed lips, go out to a dark uncertain future, submit yourself to strangers, work your way up with much toil and weariness of spirit, perhaps perish in the vain struggle, while, if you will, you may be master here on the land which belongs to you of right? Shall the woman who has been your bitterest enemy triumphantly retain her power and endow her son with all the good things of this life, while you are oppressed and kept down, thrust out from the home of your fathers? Who has thought of your feelings, of your inward conflicts? Use the weapons chance has given you. You know the joints in the enemy's armour. Strike home!'

These accusatory voices had justice on their side, and they found but too responsive an echo in Oswald's breast. All the mortifications, all the humiliations he had suffered rose up before him afresh, and stung his soul with keen and cruel stabs. That which he had endured for years, with inward chafing, it is true, but yet mutely, accepting it as a decree of Fate, goaded him to wild rebellion and fury now that he recognised the treachery that had been at work. Gradually every other feeling was stifled by the bitterness and fierce hate raging within him. The Countess would certainly have trembled, could she at this moment have beheld her nephew's countenance. He could not meet her face to face, but he knew the spot where she was vulnerable.

'There is no other way,' he said resolutely. 'To me she will not yield an inch. She will defy me to her last breath. Edmund alone is able to extract her secret from her, therefore he must be told. I will no longer be the victim of a fraud.'

A light, rapid step in the corridor outside interrupted the young man's train of thought. With a quick movement he pushed the miniature out of sight beneath the papers on the writing-table, and cast an angry, impatient glance towards the door; but he started perceptibly as he recognised his visitor.

'Edmund–you here?'

'Well, you need not look scared, as though you had seen a ghost,' said the young Count, closing the door. 'I still number among the living, and have come expressly to prove to you that, in spite of my so-called wound, you have no chance of coming into the property as yet.'

Little did Edmund guess the effect this harmless jest and the fact of his appearance at that precise moment had upon his cousin. It was only by a violent effort that Oswald regained his self-control. His voice was hoarse with emotion as he replied:

'How can you be so imprudent as to come through these long cold corridors! You were ordered not to leave your room to-day.'

'Pooh! what do I care for the doctor's orders?' said Edmund carelessly. 'Do you think I mean to be treated as an invalid, because I have got a scratch on my hand? I have put up with all their nonsense a few hours to please my mother, but I have had enough of it now. My servant has instructions to say that I am asleep, should anyone inquire after me. I came over here to have a chat with you, old fellow. I cannot possibly stay away from you on this, the very last evening you have to spend at Ettersberg.'

These words were spoken with such heartiness that Oswald involuntarily turned away.

'Let us go back to your room, at least,' he said hastily.

'No; we are not so likely to be disturbed here,' persisted Edmund, as he threw himself into an armchair. 'I have so many things to say to you–for instance, how I came by this famous wound, which has set all Ettersberg in an uproar, though it is nothing more than a pin-scratch.'

Oswald's eyes wandered uneasily to the papers, beneath which the portrait lay concealed.

'How you came by it?' he repeated absently. 'I thought your gun was fired accidentally, as you were getting over a hedge.'

'Yes; that is what we told the servants, and my mother and uncle are not to hear any other version of the affair. But I need not make a secret of it to you. I was out this morning with one of the men who joined our shooting-party–with Baron Senden.'

'With Senden?' said Oswald, becoming attentive. 'What was the quarrel between you?'