toward their new home, she told them of what other arrangements she had
made with old Mr. Muldweber. He owned a horse of venerable age, which
could be driven by the most timid lady, and the old gentleman was
willing that they should use the horse, but, as of the garden, so he
wanted to take care of the animal, too. This was cheerfully agreed to,
and when she went on to say that she had hired a phæton--really quite a
stylish affair--Miss Barbara almost smothered her with kisses, which
would not have happened, by the by, if there had been any place for
Christine to hide in.
At the gate stood Mr. Muldweber. "What a funny old man," laughed Miss
Barbara. "A patriarch," said Clara; but Christine declared, with more
than her usual energy, that no one should say anything disrespectful of
or to Mr. Muldweber in her presence.
With chivalrous bearing he welcomed Mrs. Wardor to her new home, and
his address, delivered with true German earnestness, would have checked
Miss Barbara's mirth, even without Christine's warning; and Christine
herself could only repeat, as she kissed Clara's fair head, "Der Herr
segne Deinen Einzug."
Then she led her up-stairs, where she had two rooms, opening into each
other, fitted up for Clara and herself, with windows reaching to the
floor leading to the balcony. The other window in Christine's room
looked toward the Coyote Hills, the corresponding window in Clara's room
disclosing a view of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
"Now tell me what you have on your mind, little one," she said, drawing
Clara down by the window, and looking off toward the cool, deep shadows
of the redwoods on the mountain, she listened to blushing Clara's
recital of the morning's occurrence, while she hummed softly (ending
full three notes lower than she had commenced):
"I have gazed into the darkness--
Seeking in the busy crowd
For a form once--"
"Perhaps I have done him wrong after all," she interrupted herself; and
aloud she said, cheerfully: "The name of this place will be changed
before we leave it, I know. But down there is Mr. Muldweber; I mean to
ask him about Lone Linden, and his singular fancy for that tree." She
knew Clara would be happier left alone to dream over the vision of the
morning, and her heart really went out in sympathy to this lonely old
man, who had such a longing, hungry look in his eyes as he stood with
his arm thrown around the lone linden, his other hand shading his eyes
while he peered down the road toward the town.
"No one hastens home at twilight,
Waiting for my hand to wave."
Christine's dreary singing would hardly have enlivened Mr. Muldweber's
spirits if he had heard it; but it ceased ere she came close up to him.
With his usual gallantry the old man spread his handkerchief on the
grass covering the broken mound for Christine to rest on, and before
darkness had spread over the plain and crept up to the mountain-tops,
she knew more of the old man's history--which was the history of the
linden tree--than she had ever expected to learn. He had learned to love
the girl during the few days that the fitting-up of the house had thrown
them together; and he could speak his mother tongue to her--he never
would have said so much in English.
When he had left the mining-school at Freiberg in the Fatherland to come
to the great America, he had brought with him from the old _Edelhof_,
where he was born and raised, a handful of seed from the linden trees
that formed his favorite avenue. He meant to build up just such a place
in America, and he carried the linden seed with him through the United
States and then into Mexico, where his knowledge of scientific mining
was of more use at that time. Into Mexico he carried his bride, a young
German girl, whose parents had died on their way out from the
Fatherland, and who died herself of _Heimweh_, in the strange, wild land
to which her husband brought her. But she left him a son, to whom he
gave a new mother, a dark-eyed señorita from Durango. Then he drifted on
toward California, before it was California to us, and settled finally
in the Pueblo of San Jose, near the mission of Santa Clara, after it had
ceased to be a mission. Here he built the old _adobe_--a house quite
pretentious for those times, and he threw up the mound, smooth and
round, and discernible at some distance, and planted the linden seed he
had so carefully hoarded. But he did not sow the seed broadcast; it was
a tree for every member of the family--no more. As the señorita from
Durango had presented him with quite a little herd of Muldwebers,
however, he had begun to entertain hopes of growing something of a
forest in the valley, when the dark eyes of the señorita were closed one
dread night, and never opened again to the light of this world.
The wealth she had brought him had weighed but little in her husband's
estimation; he had learned to admire her goodness of heart and nobility
of character. It was a heavy blow; but, strange to say, his heart almost
turned from her children at that time and clung again to the child of
his first love, the German girl who had died of being homesick. He grew
intolerant of Spanish, would not even speak English, but shut himself up
with his oldest son to teach him the language he had neglected for so
long. Then died the two sons of his Spanish wife, and, though he mourned
their loss, he drew still closer to his first-born.
But he had conceived the singular fancy that the spirit of his dead
could not rest while their trees lived; and he cut them down, one by
one, with his own trembling hands, and, weeping, made a fire of their
straight trunks and graceful branches, and buried the ashes deep in the
earth. It was about this time that his German friends, of whom there
were now quite a number in San Jose, began to whisper among themselves
that Mr. Muldweber was getting very queer--eccentric, in fact--if not
worse than eccentric. His son, among the first pupils of Santa Clara
College, was brought home, and pursued his studies as mining engineer
under the guidance of his father, whose intellect and mental equilibrium
seemed perfectly restored, if they had ever been wavering.
Then death ruthlessly deprived him of the last remaining child of the
Spanish woman--a daughter with eyes as dark as her mother's, and cherry
lips and dimpled cheeks; and he turned from his first-born and only
child now, shunning and avoiding him, as he had neglected all his other
children at one time. The boy, or rather young man--for he had passed
the age of twenty-one--bore his father's whim like the sensible fellow
he was, understanding well the grief, perhaps self-reproach, that was
preying on his parent's heart; and they lived on, apart, though under
the same roof. When he could no longer bear his father's coldness,
amounting almost to aversion, he left home, hoping that absence would
work a change. No letter was ever returned for the kindly-meant missives
sent by him, and when the thought of his father's growing age and
loneliness overcame his pride, and he returned, he found the homestead
let to strangers, and his father established in his little hut, more
unreasonable than ever.
He tried by kindness to conquer the old man's injustice; but one day he
spoke such hard, cruel words to his son, that pride and manhood rebelled
against the indignity, and he left the old homestead forever, he said,
vowing to live, under a strange name, "where his father should never
hear of him again, living or dead."
A shiver ran through the old man's frame; the day had gone to rest, and
the wind blew coldly through the branches of the lone tree above them;
but he would not listen to the girl's suggestion, of coming into the
house with her.
"No!" he said, "I must speak of the wrong I did to the boy right here,
under his tree; he is not dead, I know--the spirit of his mother comes
here sometimes and tells me so. She had such blue eyes--like her that is
with you; but her heart was not strong like yours, either. You see," he
continued, "I was crazy then with grief and loneliness, and
self-reproaches, and I said to him, when he spoke kindly and cheerfully,
that he was the 'laughing heir,' waiting only for me to follow his
brothers, in order to lay claim to the riches that I hoped would be a
curse to him. Ah! I see his white face before me every night, and hear
his last words ringing through my head: 'So shall they be a curse to me
if ever thou seest me again. Leave thy wealth to strangers, old man,
thou hast no longer a son.'"
He had arisen and stood erect, unconsciously giving a dramatic
representation. The hand he extended had grown firm, but his face
gleamed white and ghastly, through the falling gloom. Then the hand sank
powerless as he complained, "And he will keep his word--though he was so
good--my Rudolph."
He looked up in sudden astonishment; Christine had laid her hand on his
shoulder and gazed eagerly into his face. "Rudolph," she repeated, and
her hands wrung wildly a moment, dropped by her side in a kind of quiet
despair. But the old man hardly noticed her. He stood on the mound
again, his form bent forward, as if to catch the first glimpse of any
who might be coming up the road, and he shook his head slowly as he
muttered to himself, "Er kommt nicht, er kommt noch immer nicht."
Christine held out her hand to him. "Come, let me lead you," she said;
but the old man did not understand all the words meant.
Late at night, sitting by the open window, from where she could see his
domicile, she caught herself humming,
"'T is said that absence conquers love,
But, oh! believe it not."
And she stopped. She _was_ thinking of Rudolph. Yes, but she had fancied
at first that she was "singing out of his father's heart," not her own.
Poor Rudolph! Now she knew what had exiled him from his father's home,
and she, alas! had driven him from the new home he had meant to build
for himself. And she had thought herself right. A bankrupt suicide's
daughter, how could she, a German, with all the deep religious
prejudices of that people burnt into her soul, dream of becoming
anything more than a friend to the man she honored above all others?
People said she had led him on, had jilted him, and he had left the
country. Could she recall him? And how? Yet she could not leave this
lonely old man to die, as he was surely dying, of the remorse in his
heart and the bitter regrets for his injustice to his son.
No one, coming upon the family at the Lone Linden the very day after
their advent to the place, would have suspected them of being strangers
there. It was home to them at once. The garden, with its "two ornamental
palms," as Christine called them, its wealth of flowers and sparkling
fountain, lay all day in the laughing sunshine, and the beams that crept
in through the bay-window of the sitting-room played hide-and-seek amid
the ivy trailing its glossy leaves across the opposite wall. It was here
that Christine's piano stood, and as Miss Barbara always sought the more
gayly-furnished parlor as soon as her music-lesson was ended, so Clara
learned to despise that apartment, and spend much of her time in this
room.
Toward sunset, when shadows grew heavier, and the evening breeze shook
the foliage, the broken mound with its single tree had always a dreary
look about it, and even Clara was moved into saying, "If Mr. Muldweber
should die, I would not dare come to this tree in the evening sun--it
would be haunted, I know. I should see the old gentleman or his wraith
standing there with his arm around the tree, and his other hand shading
his eye. How lonely he looks; is he waiting for any one, I wonder?"
"Poor old man," said Christine, evasively, and she repeated,
"No one hastens home at twilight,
Waiting for my hand to wave."
"Stop, or I shall get the blues, too." Clara raised her hands to her
ears in comical despair, and Christine laughed good-naturedly at the
effect of her singing.
So the pleasant, sunshiny days passed on, with no event more stirring
than an occasional letter from Miss Barbara's father to break the
monotony of life.
It was Mr. Farnsworth's desire that Miss Barbara should be treated and
looked upon as a child, and it would have gladdened his heart could he
have seen her, in the cool of the morning or late in the afternoon, with
Snowball and Kickup in the enclosed lot called the Meadow, behind the
house. Whether it had ever been the intention of Mr. Farnsworth to have
Miss Barbara use the four-footed thing called Kickup as a saddle-horse
is not known; it is a matter of doubt, however, whether any one had ever
been on its back long enough to discover what was its best gait. To be
sure, Miss Barbara made it a point to require her "maid" to "ride around
the ring;" and she would urge the pony close up to the fence for this
purpose, assist Daisy to mount, and then give a jump to get out of reach
of Kickup's heels, for he had never been known to have more than two
feet on the ground when any one was on his back; indeed, as a general
thing, he never touched the ground again till his burden lay there too.
There was no more danger of injuring Snowball's limbs than the pony's,
and as they were taken both from the same tribe, back in Arizona
somewhere, it is to be presumed that they knew each other. But Miss
Barbara was neither cruel nor a coward. She never failed to reach
Kickup's back, and from there the ground again, sometime during the
day's performance, to Snowball's unbounded delight; and at night she
always complained to Mrs. Wardor that "her pony wasn't fairly broken
yet," "Which is not so surprising as that your bones are unbroken yet,"
Christine would say sometimes; for which Miss Barbara would give her a
supercilious look out of her wide-open eyes, as though to say: "What do
you know about it? Your father was never an army contractor."
About this time Mr. Farnsworth, in his letter to Mrs. Wardor, commenced
to promise a visit he intended making them before the summer was over;
and Mrs. Wardor commenced saying to Barbara, when she proved
particularly unmanageable, "Do try to behave like a lady, so that your
father may see you are no longer a child." And the suggestion always had
the desired effect for the time being; but the sight of Snowball driving
Kickup into the meadow would as regularly upset all her good intentions.
One day Christine came into Clara's room, with a troubled look on her
face. "What is it?" asked Clara; "is your aged _protégé_ more depressed
than usual this morning? Has he refused to enjoy his long pipe, or has
he regaled you with a longer account than usual of his son--Hans, I
think, you said his name was?"
Christine laughed in spite of herself. Clara had heard something of Mr.
Muldweber's trouble with his son, and took it for granted that Christine
knew all about it, though she had not the remotest idea of how deeply
she was interested; and one of Clara's fancies was that Mr. Muldweber's
son was a tow-headed youth, and his name was Hans.
"Mrs. Wardor has had another letter from Mr. Farnsworth," said
Christine.
"Again threatening a visit? But why should that make you look so
serious? Are you thinking of his displeasure at not finding his Barbara
an Arabella Goddard?"
"Thank God, I never held out that prospect to him. No--" she continued,
absently; "I don't like his letters, and I fear Mrs. Wardor
misunderstands him--misunderstands him entirely. He inquires very
particularly for Lady Clare in his letters, too."
"And not for you? Ah! then the cat's out of the bag," she laughed; "you
are jealous of me again."
"The vanity of some people--" Christine joined in the laugh; but the
troubled look returned to her face as she went on. "That poor old man
troubles me too; he is failing fast, and his son must come soon, or I
fear he will never see him again."
"Then why not send for him?" asked Clara, innocently; "or does he not
know where to find him?"
"No," answered Christine, savagely, after a moment's hesitation.
"Poor old man," sighed Clara; and she was careful after this to meet the
forlorn figure wandering restlessly through the grounds with all the
sweet consideration it was her nature to show those who were in pain or
trouble.
Still the old man never spoke to her of his Rudolph as he did to
Christine; it was to the brave-hearted German girl he poured out his
long pent-up complaints and lamentations; it was only to her he revealed
how the yearning for his first-born was eating his heart away. Often she
was on the point of telling him all; he would say then, she thought,
that she had acted quite correctly; would commend her for not having
fastened herself with her accursed name upon a blameless man, with fame
and fortune before him. But he would still demand at her hands his
son--his son whom she, more than himself, had made an exile and a
wanderer.
So the day passed on, and the cloud on the horizon of Lone Linden grew
darker and heavier; but no one saw it gathering save Christine.
Instinctively she felt that their fair Paradise would be destroyed when
the storm should burst, but she knew not how to divert the threatened
deluge.
When Clara rushed into her arms one day, flushed and breathless, crying,
"Oh, I knew he loved me--I felt that he had never forgotten me," her
heart misgave her--the first harbinger of threatened desolation had
come. With difficulty she prevailed on Clara to tell her calmly what had
occurred, and, triumphant and happy, she explained that Mrs. Wardor had
received a letter from Mr. Farnsworth, to say that at the end of the
week he should visit Lone Linden, bringing with him young Mr. Heraclit
Gupton, nephew of General Gupton, commanding the Department of the
Pacific.
"Poor, blind Mrs. Wardor," Clara went on to say, "saw nothing in this
but Mr. Farnsworth's desire to entertain a young gentleman whose uncle
had it in his power to award heavy army contracts; indeed, how could she
know that Heraclit Gupton was--was--"
"I have lived and loved--but that was to-day;
Go bring me my grave clothes to-morrow."
Christine filled up the pause, her voice more dreary and inclined to
"drop into the cellar" than ever.
Clara looked sobered and disappointed at this unexpected comment, but
attributed it to a sudden recollection of Christine's own "what might
have been."
"What makes you so sad, Christine? Is Mr. Muldweber really sinking as
fast as Mrs. Wardor thinks?"
"Sinking fast, child; only the promise that his son shall be brought
here, if among the living, before the moon fades, has kept the old man
alive."
"Oh! Christine, stay and be glad with me now," pleaded Clara, "the time
for mourning will come soon enough."
But Christine could not be made to rejoice, and all the comment she made
on the other's enthusiasm was,
"Oh! Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
You put strange memories in my head."
And Clara flew up-stairs to dream over this broadening flood of sunshine
as she had dreamed over the first faint glinting.
Had not Miss Barbara been strangely absent-minded about this time, she
must have observed how the color in Clara's cheek grew brighter, and her
eyes held a deeper, richer light. And if any expression so soft as a
"dreamy look" could ever have stolen into this positive young lady's
face, one would certainly have said it was there now, though it vanished
like a dream, too, whenever the Indian girl's impish laugh fell on her
ears. The Indian girl herself seemed to be the only member of the family
that was not more or less _distrait_ after the arrival of Mr.
Farnsworth's last letter, for even Kickup showed resentment at Miss
Barbara's sudden neglect of her "saddle horse." It was only natural that
Mrs. Wardor's mind should be on hospitable cares intent, which accounted
for her being oblivious to a good many things going on around her.
Saturday had been named by Mr. Farnsworth as the day on which he was to
be expected, and as the members of the family arose from the
breakfast-table that morning, Miss Barbara astonished Mrs. Wardor by a
demand for her mother's diamonds, to wear in honor of her father's
coming.
"Nonsense, child," said Mrs. Wardor; "what would the young gentleman
coming with your father think, to see a school-girl loaded down with
diamonds? Leave them in my trunk; they are better there. You might take
a notion to have a romp with Kickup before taking them off, and they
would be scattered in the meadow."
But Miss Barbara was determined to carry her point, and broke out at
last, the rebellious blood rising to her head, "I think I should be
allowed to have them, at any rate; they are _my_ diamonds, and father
promised mother that they should never go to the second wife if he did
marry again."
Mrs. Wardor's face flushed as red as Barbara's, but Christine's remained
unmoved, calmly marking the notes on a sheet of music, while Clara gave
one startled look, as though she had just made a discovery.
Early in the afternoon Miss Barbara appeared in the garden, where the
hot sun blazed down on the fiery hair, the burning cheeks, and the
flashing jewels. Her eyes were hardly less sparkling than her diamonds,
and as she threw a searching look down the road and across the plain,
toward the town, they seemed to glitter and glint in all the colors of
the rainbow, just like the stones in her ears and at her throat. Later,
Clara came to the hall-door, but drew back when Barbara came to join
her; the girl's appearance gave her a "scorched" sensation, she said to
Christine, who seemed blind to the shadows that coming events were
casting before them. At least there was neither glad anticipation nor
nervous haste noticeable in her as in the rest, but her heart was very
heavy within her. Nevertheless she chided Clara for having dressed in
black after all, when she had firmly decided to wear white; and she
urged her back into the garden, for she knew her soul was flying across
the road to the city, to meet the form she had dreamed of day and night
since Mr. Farnsworth's announcement.
The afternoon breeze was gently stirring the fragrant flower heads when
she entered the garden again and approached Miss Barbara, who had taken
up her station by the low picket fence where the ground rose above the
level of the road. Clara, too, sent out a wistful look across the plain.
Perhaps she had sighed, for she felt the girl's eyes on her, and as she
looked up, it came back to her painfully what Barbara had once said
about her lack of color. Could her heart be growing envious of the girl?
She did not ask herself the question, but she felt the impulse to turn
and leave her, and would have done so had not a start and flutter on the
girl's part told her that a vehicle was in sight.
She did not look down the road; she would not betray her feelings to the
merciless eyes of this red-headed girl; but her own heart beat so that
Barbara's agitation entirely escaped her. She turned toward the house.
She _must_ press her hand to her heart to still the tumultuous beating.
On the balcony stood Christine, an affectionate smile lighting up the
dark features as she threw kisses to her and pointed to the light
carriage now quite near the gate. Then the color came back into Clara's
face, and, with a sudden joyous impulse, she fluttered her handkerchief
in the breeze, and laughed like a glad child reaching out its hand for
a long-coveted toy. Mrs. Wardor came to the door; the carriage stopped
at the gate that minute, and two gentlemen sprang to the ground.
Just how it all took place, perhaps none of them ever knew--not even
Christine, who had remained on the balcony, a deeply-interested, though
not indelicate, spectator. They lingered in the garden a little while,
and before they entered the house Mr. Farnsworth had pompously announced
to Mrs. Wardor that this was the young gentleman who had so faithfully
and persistently paid court and attention to his daughter Barbara; that
he had at last been touched by his unwavering devotion, and had decided
to make his only child happy--as happy as he himself hoped to be some
day in the not distant future.
"Bless your soul," he added, in an undertone, to Mrs. Wardor, who had
just had an unaccountable attack of heart-beating, "if I had known that
Barbara's 'young man' was General Gupton's nephew, she should have had
him six months ago, and welcome." He was interrupted by Barbara's asking
permission to go driving with her "young man," and, the father
consenting, they were soon speeding over the road in the light carriage
that had brought the gentlemen.