Madame Odenthal felt relieved. She plainly perceived that Gertrude had no intention of so completely taking her into her confidence as to allude to any other attachment; and whether she were right or wrong in suspecting that her own son was the object of it, she being left in apparent ignorance, was, on every account, most desirable.
Gertrude had, fortunately, not been looking at her; indeed, she evidently avoided doing so, fixing her eyes immovably upon a fragment of silk which she was unravelling.
Lightly, therefore, and with no appearance of suspecting that more was meant than met the ear, Madame Odenthal acquitted her of all blame for not being more in love with her fine furniture, and even ventured to say that she began to wish the baron himself had a less violent passion for it.
“I am certainly very ignorant in all such matters,” said the good woman; “but it seems to me that your papa must be spending a very large sum of money. Did he ever tell you, my dear, the amount of the sum which it was his purpose to expend on your furniture?”
Gertrude smiled.
“I thought you knew my father better than you now appear to do,” said she. “I can no more fancy that he would condescend to name a limit to the sum he destined for such a purpose, than that he would inquire how much the dinner of to-morrow would cost, before he sat down to it. Nor do I suppose that there is any reason in the world why he should do so.” Madame Odenthal did not immediately reply to this; and, indeed, her silence lasted so long, that Gertrude, looking up from her ravellings, said, with some quickness, “What are you thinking of, dear friend?”
“You will laugh at me again, if I tell you,” replied Madame Odenthal, shaking her head.
“And if I do, you ought to be glad of it. I was afraid that I had left off laughing. I suppose it is the near approach of all the prodigious splendour which is awaiting me, that has made me so grave. I really wish you would say something to make me laugh.”
“But perhaps it may be less at my wit, than my folly, that you will feel inclined to do so,” said the good woman, colouring; “but I will boldly tell you my thoughts for all that. My opinion is, dear Gertrude, that your papa is scarcely aware of the large amount of debts that he has already contracted. We arc all so accustomed, you know, to consider his great estates as bringing him a revenue beyond what he can wish to spend, that I should not wonder if he had adopted the same idea himself; and that he may hardly be aware of the great difference of going on as he did at Schloss Schwanberg, and as he is doing now, at Paris.”
Gertrude listened to this very unexpected statement with all the attention it deserved, and certainly felt no inclination to laugh at it; but nevertheless, she was so nearly in the state of mind which Madame Odenthal attributed to her father, that her words produced surprise, rather than alarm.
After silently pondering for a minute or two upon what she had heard, she replied, “I am very glad you have thus spoken to me, my dear friend, because the mere possibility of such a want of thought and calculation on the part of my dear, generous father, is quite enough to make me anxious to know whether there is any, even a remote, possibility that such may be the case. It really never occurred to me to think of such a possibility before; but now that the thought has been awakened, you may depend upon it, that it shall not be permitted to go to sleep again till you and I are both of us quite sure that it may slumber and sleep in safety!”
What Gertrude thus promised, she speedily performed; and it was by no means very difficult to find an opportunity for doing so; for the very next time she saw her father, he was, if possible, more than usually full of his new-found occupation, and more than usually earnest in his declaration, that the mansion of Madame la Comtesse de Hernwold should be one of the most splendidly furnished in Paris.
Upon this hint she spoke, smilingly asking him if he had ever calculated what the amount of the entire cost would be, when the whole of his plans were completed.
He stared at her in return to this question with the most genuine astonishment, not altogether unmixed with displeasure.
“Is it possible, Baroness Gertrude,” he said, “that the approaching change in your situation can have inspired you already so much with the spirit of a thrifty housewife, as to render such an inquiry on your part serious? I flatter myself that my daughter has never yet had occasion to trouble herself by calculating the expense of any purchase which it may have been her pleasure to make; and I conceive myself fully justified in assuring her that the nobleman who has been accepted as the future husband of my heiress, is by no means likely to be so sordid in his motives as to render any such anxieties needful, or, in fact, in any way proper, for the future. Never again, Gertrude, let me hear you express an idea so every way unbecoming your station; and, at the same time, so every way unnecessary superfluous, and, in fact, ridiculous.”
This speech was certainly the nearest approach to real scolding that had ever been addressed to Gertrude, and for a minute or two she felt rather at a loss how to receive it. But it required no longer interval to bring to her heart the conviction, that whether scolded or not, it was her duty to listen to him with respectful attention, and not to permit herself to be too certain that the baron might not be right in his estimates, and herself and Madame Odenthal wrong.
At the present moment, however, all she could do was to mollify the angry nobleman’s offended feelings by the frank confession that she certainly was much top ignorant of the subject they had been discussing, to give any opinion upon it; and finally restored his good humour, by impressing a gentle kiss upon his forehead, and assuring him that she was only afraid of his being too generous.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
NOTWITHSTANDING the indignation both experienced and expressed by the baron at listening to this unexpected remonstrance from his daughter, the said remonstrance did not altogether fall to the ground.
It is, nevertheless, certain that the Baron von Schwanberg said no more than he felt, when he pronounced that such fears as his daughter had expressed, were alike unfounded as to fact, and injurious as to the imputation they cast upon his discretion.
But the baron was a great smoker, and ere he laid aside, that night, the splendid apparatus by means of which he indulged this habit, the idea occurred to him, that although Gertrude had talked not only like a child, but a silly one, it certainly was not impossible that among the vast variety of things which he had ordered, there might be some of a higher value, or, at any rate, of a higher price than he was aware of. He was ready to confess, too — at least to himself and his meerschaum — that he had never made himself very familiar with the price of ornamental furniture in any land, and that it was not unlikely that it might be rather particularly costly at Paris.
All the sage reflections brought him at length to the conviction, that it might be as well to order some few of the tradesmen he had employed to send in their accounts. And as one wise thought very often begets another, he also determined, just before he settled himself to sleep that night, that he would also send to the banker, with whom, on his arrival, he deposited the sheaf of bills which he had brought with him on arriving at Paris, and which had been since augmented by rents transmitted to him by his tenants in the country, in order to learn what balance he had in their hands.
The good-natured reader could only be pained were I to attempt entering into particulars either respecting tradesmen’s accounts, or the banker’s either. Suffice it to say, that the discrepancy between the amount of what he owed, and what was due to him, was great indeed! It was so great, in fact, as for a long time to appear to him absolutely incredible; and the terrible process of proving to him that a hundred thousand taken from eighty thousand, left, or rather found, a deficit of twenty thousand, was not performed by the unfortunate Madame Odenthal, without a degree of difficulty which amounted to very positive suffering.
Gertrude was not permitted to be present at any of the painful scenes which preceded his final conviction that he actually owed, after a three months’ residence in Paris,
twenty thousand francs more than he had, at the moment, ready money to pay.
It was in vain that Madame Odenthal pointed out to him the very consolatory fact, that the deficiency was by no means large enough to occasion him any permanent inconvenience; and that if he would please to write a letter to Rupert, directing him what tenants to apply to, and furnishing him with the necessary authority for collecting the sum required, he would be sure to transmit the money to the Paris banker long before any of the tradesmen he employed would think of troubling him about the payment of their accounts.
The baron listened to her with a countenance that became redder and fiercer with every word she spoke; so much so, indeed, that she became frightened, and stopped short, long before she had said all that it was in her power to say, respecting the perfect facility with which a gentleman in his position might obtain what he wanted without the slightest difficulty of any kind.
“What!” he exclaimed, in the very loudest tone to which his very loud voice could be raised; “what! do you suppose I am going to send about begging petitions to my tenants, imploring them, for charity, to pay me my rents before they are due? Woman! are you mad? What have you ever seen in my conduct, or in my character, which can justify your holding so base an opinion of me? I go begging to my tenants? I? And which among them do you think would do me the great wrong of believing that such a message could come from me? Your son is a very worthy, respectable youth, my good woman, and the manner in which I have permitted him to domesticate himself with, me, has conferred upon him a degree of distinction which nothing else could have done; and, as you must have observed both in his case and your own, has induced that distinguished portion of society to which I belong, to permit his approach to them, as if, in some mysterious manner, he really belonged to their class. I am as much aware the effect my patronage has produced, as cither you or he can he; but I am not so bewildered in intellect as to suppose that if he were to be the bearer of such a message to my tenants, as you have named, they would any one of them believe that such a message ever came from me.”
Being here somewhat out of breath, from the extreme vehemence with which he had spoken, the baron paused; and poor Madame Odenthal took advantage of the interval to say, that though quite aware that nothing but his great and most condescending kindness had enabled her son Rupert to enter into such society as that to which he had been introduced by his generous master; yet still she thought that his character for truth in the neighbourhood where he was best known, would ensure his being believed, let him deliver to the good people whatever message he was charged with.
The interval during which she had pronounced these few words, and which was accorded to her by the absolute necessity of breathing, in which the baron had found himself, had so far enabled him to subdue the first emotions of the anger she had excited, as to enable him to reply to her in a tone of comparative tranquillity.
“And do you really believe, my good woman,” he began: “do you really believe that there is any man, woman, or child (above babyhood,) residing upon my estates, who could be persuaded by your son, let his reputation for truth be what it may, that I could have been guilty of such conduct as you now propose to me?” And here the baron positively showed his teeth, as if he were really laughing. It is said that the merely placing the features in this position, will often restore the feeling of good humour, as well as the appearance of it, and it might have been so on the present occasion, in the case of the baron, for it is certain that the extremity of his wrath against Madame Odenthal seemed to have relaxed, and he dismissed her, rather stiffly it must be confessed, but without any further appearance of positive anger, saying, “There! you may go now, my good woman. You have been useful to me in going through these long accounts, and I am no longer displeased with you.- Indeed, I feel that it would be a great folly in me to feel any lasting displeasure, merely because MY ideas of what is right and honourable, differ from those of a person in so very different a situation. Go, my good Madame Odenthal, but remember that you are not, on any account, to inform my daughter of the unpleasant discovery which I have made. If I have got in a scrape, I know perfectly well how to get out of it; but I will not permit the tranquillity of the Baroness Gertrude to be disturbed for a moment. You understand me?”
“Certainly,” replied the good woman, still looking somewhat frightened. “The Baroness Gertrude,” she added very earnestly, “shall never become acquainted with what has occurred through me.”
“Very well, then,” was the rejoinder, uttered in a much more condescending tone than was usual with him on any occasion; “if you will faithfully keep that promise to me, I will, on my side, promise you to forget the offence your strange proposal of my begging assistance from my own tenants, occasioned me.”
And so they parted; the baron, with the appearance of being suddenly restored to good humour, and Madame Odenthal, with a very painful burden of sadness at her heart, from the persuasion that his profound ignorance, both on the subject of buying the things, and on the subject of paying for them, could scarcely fail of producing painful consequences for her beloved Gertrude, who she was only too sure was in no condition to endure new sorrows of any kind.
This melancholy insight, however, into her state of mind, was the result of no confidential disclosures on the part of Gertrude; but, in truth, no one, excepting her blind father, could have known her as she had been, and seen her as she was now, without perceiving that she was in no condition to endure any new anxiety well.
But if he had marked her pale cheek and heavy eye, he would have thought but little about it, and that little would only have gone to interpret the change into a sympathetic feeling with what he had experienced himself. His head was giddy with all the splendid predictions with which he was perpetually regaling himself; and if he had thought about it at all, he would assuredly have accounted for the alteration, by telling himself that it was very natural, and that any girl might feel a little nervous and overcome, at the idea of being the mistress of such a house as he was preparing for her.
But, notwithstanding all this, he was sufficiently awake to the necessity of paying his debts, to prevent his losing any time in commencing the operations by which it was his purpose to achieve this desirable object.
His first step was to write the following concise epistle to his intended son-in-law: —
“MY DEAR COUNT,
“Will you have the kindness to bestow an early visit upon me to-morrow morning? I will not beguile you with any hope of beholding the young lady who is so soon to have the honour of becoming Countess of Hernwold, for the visit I ask for is for myself, and not for her.
“Believe me, dear Count,
“Your truly attached, and
“Very devoted friend,
“VON SCHWANBERG.”
This epistle was immediately dispatched by the hands of an intelligent messenger, with strict orders not to return till he had himself placed it in the hands of Count Hernwold.
This command was both speedily and accurately executed; and the messenger brought back a verbal, but very courteous reply, that the Count would wait upon him at an early hour on the following morning.
This was performed to the letter; for Baron von Schwanberg had but just quitted the breakfast-table, when his expected visitor was announced.
The meeting was exactly everything that a meeting should be between two noble gentlemen about to be so closely united. It was more than merely cordial — it was really affectionate. As soon as they were seated, the baron said, with the very slightest shade of embarrassment imaginable, “I am afraid you will accuse me of being a very careless father-in-law when I tell you, my dear Count, that I find I have not cash enough at my bankers to pay for the furniture I have been purchasing as a present to you and Gertrude.”
Count Hernwold very perceptibly changed colour, but answered, with a bow and something like a smile, “There are many persons in Paris to whom such a discovery might be very disagreeable; but it is impossible I
can believe, for a moment, that you are one of them. The Baron von Schwanberg is not likely to find any great difficulty in bringing his banker’s account into good order again.”
“I wish I could tell you that you were right in thinking so, my good friend; but, unfortunately, my case is exactly the reverse. Instead of my not finding any difficulty in setting this matter right, I am extremely sorry to say that I know it to be impossible that I should do so.
“Impossible, Sir, that you should be able to settle your account satisfactorily with your banker?” responded the astonished Count, with a look of unmistakable dismay. “I must suppose that you are jesting with me.”
“Pray do not adopt such an idea as that,” replied the baron, with considerable dignity. “I should be extremely sorry, Count, that you should suppose me capable of such idle levity as jesting upon a matter of business. I desired you to call upon me this morning expressly for the purpose of telling you of the foolish blunder I have made in buying more furniture for the house than I have money to pay for, and also to beg of you to help me out of the scrape. I presume, my dear Sir, that you will have no objection to my ordering some of the heavier bills to be sent in to you? I hate the notion of being in debt to these people, and, therefore, I sent to you as soon as ever I found out how the case stood.”
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 452