"Fraulein," answered Katschuka, with cold politeness, "I shall always be your devoted friend. The blow which fell on you struck me too--we have both lost our all. I am in despair, for I see no means of resuscitating my hopes reduced to ashes. My profession imposes conditions on me which I can not fulfill: it is not allowed to those of us who have no private means to marry."

"I know it," said Athalie, "and it was not that which I wished to suggest to you. We are now very poor, but there may be some favorable turn in our lot. My father has a rich uncle in Belgrade whose heirs we are; at his death we shall be rich again. I will wait for you--do you wait for me. Take back your ring--take me to your mother, and let me stay with her as your betrothed. I will wait for you till you fetch me away, and will be a good daughter to your mother."

Herr Katschuka sighed so deeply that he nearly blew out the light which stood before him. "Alas, fraulein," said he, taking up the golden circle from the table, "that is, unhappily, quite impossible. You little know my mother. She is an ambitious woman--an inaccessible nature. She lives on a small pension, and loves no one. You have no idea what struggles I have had with my mother about my _affaires du cur_. She is a baroness by birth, and has never consented to this union. She would not come to our marriage. I could not take you to her, fraulein--on your account I have quarreled with her."

Athalie's breast heaved feverishly, her face glowed; she seized with both her hands that of her faithless bridegroom, on which the ring was wanting, and whispered, while tears ran down her cheeks, so low that even the deaf walls could not hear, "You--you have braved your mother for me: I will defy the whole world for you!"

Katschuka dared not meet the speaking eyes of the lovely woman. He drew geometrical figures on the table with the golden circle he still held, as if he would decipher from their angles of incidence the difference between love and madness.

The girl continued in a whisper, "I am already so deeply humiliated that no shame can bring me lower; I have no more to lose in this world. If you were not here, I should have already killed myself. I belong not to myself, but to you--say, what shall I be to you? I have lost my senses, and all is the same to me; kill me, if you choose--I will not stir."

Herr Katschuka, during this pa.s.sionate speech, had worked out the problem of what he was to answer. "Fraulein Athalie, I will speak frankly--you know I am an honest man."

Athalie had not asked him about that.

"An honest and chivalrous man would be ashamed to take advantage of the misfortune of a woman for the satisfaction of his lowest pa.s.sions. I will give you good advice as a well-meaning friend, as one who has a boundless respect for you. You tell me you have an uncle in Belgrade: go to him. He is your blood relation, and must receive you in a friendly way. I give you my word of honor that I will not marry, and if we meet again I shall always bring you the same feelings which for years I have experienced toward you."

He told no lie when he gave this promise. But from what his face showed at this moment, Athalie could read what he did not say--that the captain neither now nor for years past had loved her, that he loved another, and if this other was poor and made a beggar, he had good reason to promise on his word of honor that he would not marry. This it was which Athalie read in the cool expressions of her faithless bridegroom. And then something flashed through her brain like lightning. Her eyes flashed too.

"Will you come to-morrow," she asked him, "to escort me to my uncle in Belgrade?"

"I will come," Katschuka hastened to reply. "But now go home. Did any one come with you?"

"I came quite alone."

"What imprudence! Who is to take you back?"

"You need not," she said, bitterly. "If at this hour any one saw us together, what a scandal it would be--for you. I can walk alone. I am not afraid. I have no longer anything worth stealing."

"My servant shall follow you."

"He shall do nothing of the sort. The patrol might arrest the poor devil. After the last post he must not be seen in the streets. I will find my way alone. So then--to-morrow--"

"I will be with you by eight o'clock."

Athalie wrapped herself in her black cloak, and hurried away before Katschuka had time to open the door for her. It seemed to her as if the captain was putting on his sword almost before she had left his door. Is he perhaps going to follow her in the distance?

She stopped at the corner of the Anglia, but no one was following. She ran home in the darkness, and as she hastened through the deep night she concocted a plan in her head. If only the captain once sits by her in the carriage, if he goes with her to Belgrade, he will see that no power on earth can deliver him from her. As she pa.s.sed through the long market-hall, she stumbled again over the same female figure as it lay on the stones. This time it did not awake nor curse her. What sound sleep these wretches enjoy! But when Athalie got to the door of her home, a thought sunk like lead into her mind. What if the captain was only so ready with his promise of escorting her to Belgrade in order to get rid of her? What if he does not come to-morrow, either at eight or later? A torturing jealousy excited her nerves. When she reached the anteroom, she felt about on the table for the candle and matches she had left there. Instead of these her hand touched a knife--a sharp cook's knife with a heavy handle. This also sheds light on darkness. She grasped the knife and walked up and down. Her teeth chattered: the thought was working in her, how if she were to drive this knife into the heart of that girl with the white face, who sleeps beside her? That would be an end of them both. They would convict her of the murder, and so she would get out of the world.

But Timea is not sleeping there now.

Athalie only remembered when she had gone to the bed in which Timea usually slept, that she was sleeping with Frau Sophie to-night. The knife fell from her hand, and then she was frightened. She began to feel how lonely she was, how dark was all around her, dark too in her own soul.

The roll of a drum awoke Athalie out of a distressing dream. She dreamed of a young lady who had murdered her rival, and was led to the place of execution. Already she knelt on the scaffold, the headsman with his naked sword stood behind her, the judge read the sentence and said, "With G.o.d there is pardon." The drum beat, then Athalie awoke.

It was the auctioneer's drum. The bidding had begun; but that drum is even more dreadful than the one which gives the signal of death. To listen, when the voice which penetrates even to the street calls out the well-known old favorite things which only yesterday were our own! "Once, twice; any advance?" and then "thrice!" and the drum rolls and the hammer falls. Then it begins again, "Once, twice; any advance?"

Athalie put on her mourning-dress, the only one left to her, and went to find some one. There were only her mother and Timea to look for. They would probably be in the kitchen.

Both had long been up and dressed. Frau Sophie was as round as a tub.

Knowing well enough that no one would search her, she had put on a dozen dresses one over the other, and hidden a few napkins and silver spoons in her pockets. She could hardly move. Timea was in her simple black every-day dress, and was preparing warm milk and coffee. At the sight of Athalie, Frau Sophie broke into loud sobs, and hung on her neck. "Oh, my dear, darling, pretty daughter! What have we come to, and what will become of us? Oh, that we had not lived to see this day! This dreadful drum woke you, I suppose?"

"Is it not yet eight o'clock?" asked Athalie. The kitchen clock was still going.

"Not eight? Why, the auction began at nine. Can you not hear it?"

"Has no one been to see us?"

"Silly idea! Why, who should visit us at such a time?"

Athalie said no more, but sat down on the bench--the same little seat on which Frau Sophie had described to Timea the splendid wedding ceremony.

Timea prepared the breakfast, toasted the bread, and laid the kitchen table for the two ladies. Athalie did not heed the invitation, however much pressed by Frau Sophie. "Drink, my dear, my own pretty! Who knows where we shall get coffee to-morrow? The whole world is against us, and every one abuses and curses us. What will become of us?" But that did not hinder her from gulping down her cup of coffee. Athalie was thinking of the journey to Belgrade, and of her expected traveling companion.

Frau Sophie's mind was much occupied with original notions on easy modes of death. "If there were only a pin in the coffee that it might stick in my throat and choke me." Then the wish arose that the flat-iron would fall down from the shelf as she pa.s.sed and crush her skull. She would be glad, too, if one of the earthquakes which occasionally occur in Komorn would happen now, and bury the house and all in it. As, however, none of these ways of dying came to pa.s.s, and Athalie would not speak, there was nothing left but to vent her wrath on Timea. "She takes it easily, the ungrateful creature! She is not even crying; indeed it is easy for her to laugh--she can go to service, or work with a milliner and keep herself; she will be glad to be quit of us, and live on her own hook.

You just wait, you will soon have to remember us. You'll be sorry--before a year is over you'll repent fast enough." Timea had done nothing to repent of, but Frau Sophie saw it in the future, and her anger was only surpa.s.sed by the grief she felt about Athalie. "What will become of you, you sweet and only darling? Who will take care of you?

What will become of your pretty white hands?"

"There, go and leave me in peace," said Athalie, shaking her lamenting mother off her neck. "Go and look out of the window and see if any one is coming up to us."

"n.o.body, n.o.body!--who should be coming?"

Time went on; drum and bid succeeded each other; whenever the kitchen clock struck, Athalie started up, and then let her head fall into her hands again and stared before her. The roses on her cheeks took a violet shade, her lips were blue, an olive shadow darkened her exquisite face; her staring eyes, with deep marks below them, her swollen lips, her painfully contracted eyebrows, turned the ideal beauty into an image of horror. She sat like a fallen angel driven from heaven. It was already noon, and he for whom she waited never came. The noise of the sale came nearer and nearer. The auctioneer went from room to room; they had begun in the outer rooms, now they were coming to the reception-rooms, at whose far end was the kitchen.

Frau Sophie, in spite of her despair, had her senses about her enough to notice that the bidding was very quick. Hardly was anything put up before the drum beat, and "any advance?" was cried. The buyers standing in groups complained, "No one has a chance--the man is mad. Who can this fool be?"

Now only the kitchen department is left, but no one enters it. Outside, the drum is heard, "No one will give more?" It has been bought as a whole, unseen--by some fool.

It struck Frau Sophie, too, that people did not hasten to fetch the lots they bought out of the rooms, as usual at an auction; here nothing is touched. Now comes the princ.i.p.al lot, and every one goes down to the yard, for the house itself is being put up. The buyers press round the table of the official auctioneer; the upset price is named. Then some one makes an offer in a low voice. Among the crowd arises a confused noise, tones of astonishment, laughter, hissing; the people scatter, and again one hears, "He must be a fool." Grumbling and angry, all go away.

"Once, twice, thrice!" the hammer falls. The house has found a purchaser.

"Now it's time to go, my sweet darling daughter. We will look out for the last time. If only the tower of St. John's Church would fall and crush us all together!" But Athalie sat on the bench, waiting and waiting, and looking at the clock. It points to two. One little ray of hope still shone through the Egyptian darkness--perhaps it was the dread of pushing through the crowd of bidders which had kept the captain from coming; perhaps he will appear as soon as the yard is clear.

"Don't you hear some one coming?"

"No, my beauty, I hear nothing."

"Yes, mother, I hear some one creeping upstairs gently, on tiptoe."

In truth soft steps approach. Some one knocks at the kitchen door, like a polite visitor who begs permission to enter, and waits till it is given him; and then the door opens gently, and in comes, with hat off, and courteous bow--Michael Timar Levetinczy. He remained standing near the door after saluting the ladies. Athalie rose with an expression of disappointment and hatred; Frau Sophie wrung her hands, and looked up with a mixture of hope and fear; Timea met his gaze with gentle calmness.

"I," began Timar, sending his "I" in advance like a pope in his bull--"I have had this house and all its saleable contents knocked down to me at the auction. I did not buy it for myself, but for the one person in it who is not to be bought, and yet is the only treasure on earth in my sight. . . . Fraulein Timea, from this day forward you are the mistress of this house. Everything in it belongs to you--the clothes, the jewels in the wardrobes, the horses in the stable, the securities in the safe--all is inscribed in your name, and the creditors are satisfied.

You are the owner of the house--accept it from me; and if there is a corner in it where there is room for a quiet fellow who would only impose on you his respect and admiration, and if this corner could be given to me--if there was a little shelter for me in your heart, and you did not refuse my hand--then I should be only too happy, and would swear that the whole aim of my life would be to make you as happy as you made me."

Timea's face beamed at these words with maidenly pride. A mixture of inexpressible pain, n.o.ble grat.i.tude, and holy sacrifice lighted up her countenance. "Thrice, thrice," her lips stammered, but without a sound, only her sympathetic nerves heard what she wanted to utter. This man had so often saved her; he was always so good to her; he had never made sport of her, nor flattered her, and now he gives her all her heart could desire. All? No, all but one thing, and that is gone; it belongs to another.

Timar waited quietly for an answer. Timea remained silent.