The clock struck eight. Gentlemen on foot had already been coming to
the hotel for some time, then ladies arrived, and at length the first
carriage containing guests for the ball rolled up, dainty feet tripped
up the steps, and rich silks rustled as they walked. Carriage followed
carriage; now came an elegant equipage with magnificent gray horses, a
charming slight woman's figure in a light blue dress covered with
delicate lace, bent forward, and a silvery laugh sounded in Linden's
ear. "It is Mrs. Fredericks," he heard the people murmur behind him.
So that was her sister!
The beautiful young wife swept up the steps like a lovely fairy,
followed by her husband in a faultless black dress-coat, carrying her
fan and bouquet.
The carriage dashed across the marketplace again, to return in less
than five minutes.
"Gertrude!" whispered Linden, drawing involuntarily further back into
the shadow. A short stout lady in a light gray dress descended from the
carriage, then she glided out and stood beside her mother, slender and
graceful in her shimmering white silk, her beautiful shoulders lightly
covered, and in her hand a well-known bouquet of pale roses. But this
was not the girl of a few hours back. The small head was bent back as
if the massive light brown braids were too heavy for it, and an
expression of proud reserve which he had not before perceived, rested
on the open countenance.
Two gentlemen started forward to greet the ladies; the first gallantly
offered his arm to the mother, the other approached the young girl. She
thanked him proudly, scarcely touching his arm with her finger-tips.
Then suddenly this figure from which he could not take his eyes,
vanished like a beautiful vision.
The encounter had left him in a mood of intense excitement. He bestowed
a dollar on a poor woman who stood beside him with a miserable child in
her arms, and he ordered out so big a glass of hot wine for old
Summerfeld, his coachman, that the old man was alarmed and hoped "they
should get home all right."
"What folly it is," said Linden to himself. And when a moment later his
carriage drove up, and at the same moment the notes of a Strauss waltz
struck his ear, he began to hum the air of "The Rose of the South."
Then the carriage rattled over the market-place out on the dark country
road, and sooner than usual he was at home in his quiet little room,
taking a thousand pleasant thoughts with him.
In the manor-house at Niendorf there was one room in which roses
bloomed in masses; not only in the boxes between the double windows or
in the pots on the sill according to the season, but in the room
itself, thousands of earth's fairest flowers were wreathed about the
pictures and furniture. It had a strange effect, especially when
instead of the sleeping beauty one might have expected to find here,
one perceived a very old woman in an arm chair by the window,
unweariedly engaged in cutting leaves and petals out of colored silk
paper, shaping and putting them together so that at length a rose
trembled on its wire stem, looking as natural from a little distance as
if it had just been cut from the bush. Aunt Rosalie could not live
without making roses; she lavished half her modest income on silk
paper, and every one whom she wished well, received a wreath of roses
as a present, red, pink, white and yellow blossoms tastefully
intermixed. All the village beauties wore roses of Aunt Rosalie's
manufacture in their well-oiled hair at the village dances. The graves
in the church-yard displayed masses of white and crimson roses from the
same store, torn and faded by wind and sun. The little church was
lavishly decked every year by Aunt Rosalie, with these witnesses to her
skill.
She was known therefore throughout the village to young and old as
"Aunt Rose" or "Miss Rose," and not seldom was she followed in her
walks by a crowd of children, especially little girls, with the
petition "a rose for me too!" And "Aunt Rose" was always prepared for
them; the less successful specimens were kept entirely for this purpose
and were distributed from her capacious reticule with a lavish hand.
Frank Linden had long been accustomed to spend an occasional hour in
the old lady's society. At the sight of her something of the atmosphere
of peace which surrounded her seemed to descend upon him and calmed and
soothed him. She would sit calm and still at her little table, her
small withered hands busied in forming the "symbols of a well-rounded
life." By degrees she had related to him in a quaintly solemn tone,
stories of the lives which had passed under the pointed gables of this
roof. There was little light and much shade among them, much guilt, and
error, a dark bit of life-history. A married pair who did not agree, an
only child idolized by both, and this only son covered himself and his
parents with disgrace and fled to America, where he died. The parents
were left behind without hope or comfort in the world, each reproaching
the other for the failure in their son's training. Then the wife died
of grief, and now began an endless term of loneliness for the elderly
man under a ban of misanthropy and scorn of his kind; loving no one but
his dog, associating with no one except with Wolff, who brought the
news and gossip of the town, and treating even him with a disdain
bordering on insult.
"But you see, my dear nephew," the old aunt had added, "there are men
who are more like hounds than the hounds themselves,--dogs will cry out
when they are trodden upon, but the sort to which he belongs will smile
humbly at the hardest kick--and William found such a man necessary to
him."
It was snowing; the mountains were all white, the garden lay shrouded
under a shining white coverlid, and white snow-flakes were dancing in
the air. Frank Linden had come back from hunting with the steward, and
after dinner he went into Aunt Rosalie's room. She rose as he entered
and came towards him.
"There you see, my dear nephew, what happens when you go out for a day.
You have had a visit, such a splendid fashionable visitor in a
magnificent sleigh. I was just taking my walk in the corridor as he
came up the stairs and here is his card,"--she searched in her
reticule--"which he left for you."
Frank took the card and read. "Arthur Fredericks." "Oh, I am sorry," he
said, really regretting his loss. "When was he here?"
"Oh, just at noon precisely, when most Christians are eating their
dinner," she replied. "And the postman has been here too and brought a
letter for you. Oh, dear, where is it now? Where could I have put it?"
And she turned about and began to look for it, first on the table among
the pieces of silk paper and then on the floor, assisted by the young
man.
"What did the letter look like, dearest Aunt?"
"Blue--or gray--blue, I think," she replied, all out of breath, turning
out the contents of her red silk reticule. She brought out a mass of
rose-buds and an immense handkerchief edged with lace, but nothing
else.
"Was the letter small or large?" he inquired from behind the sofa.
"Large and thick," gasped Aunt Rosalie. "Such a thing never happened to
me before in my life--it is really dreadful." And with astounding
agility she turned over the things on the consumptive little piano and
tossed the antique sheets of music about.
"Perhaps it got into the stove, Auntie."
"No, no, it has not been unscrewed since this morning."
Frank Linden went to the bell and rung. "Don't take any more trouble
about it, Auntie, the letter is sure to turn up; let the maid look for
it."
Dorothy came and looked, and looked behind all the furniture, and
shaking out all the curtains--but in vain.
"Well, we will give it up," declared Linden at length--"I suppose it is
a letter from my mother or from the Judge--I can ask them what they had
to say. Let us drink our coffee. Auntie."
"I shan't sleep the whole night," declared the little old lady in much
excitement.
"O don't think any more about it," he begged her, good-humoredly. "I am
sure there was nothing of any great importance in it. Tell me some of
your old stories now, they will just suit this weather."
But the wrinkled face under the great cap still wore an anxious look,
and the dim eyes kept straying away from the coffee cups searchingly
round the room, lingering thoughtfully on the green lamp-shade.
Evidently there was no hope of a conversation with her. After awhile
the young man rose to go to his own room.
"Yes, go, go," she said, relieved, "and then I can think where I could
have put that letter. Oh, my memory! my memory! I am growing so old."
He walked along the corridor and mounted the staircase into the second
story. The twilight of the short winter day had already darkened all
the comers. It was painfully still in the house, only the echo of his
own footsteps sounding in his ear. It was such a day as his friend had
predicted for him--horribly lonely and empty, it seemed to rest like a
heavy weight on this world-remote house. One cannot always read, cannot
always be busy, especially when the thoughts stray uneasily out over
forest and meadow to a distinct goal, and always return anxious and
doubting.
He stood in his room at the window and watched the snow flakes
fluttering down in the darkening air, and fell into a dream as he had
done every day for the last week. He gave himself up to it so entirely
that he fancied he could distinctly hear a light step behind him on the
carpet, and the soft tones of a woman's voice, saying, "Frank,
Frankie!" He turned and gazed into the dusky room. What if she were to
open the door now,--what if she should come in with the child in her
arms? Why should it not be, why could it not be? Were these walls not
strong enough, these rooms not cosy and homelike enough to hold such
happiness?
He began to walk up and down. Folly! Nonsense! What was he thinking of?
Oh, if he had never come here, or better still if she were only the
daughter of the foreman like her grandmother, and sat on the bench
before the little house under the lilac tree, then everything would be
so simple. He would not for the world enter that mad race for Gertrude
Baumhagen's money-bags, in which so many had already come to grief. But
her sweet friendship?--
And then he fell helpless again before the charm of her eyes.
He was suffering from those doubts, from those alternating fears and
hopes that torment every man who is in love. And Frank Linden in his
loneliness had long since acknowledged to himself that he only wanted
Gertrude Baumhagen to complete his happiness.
His was by no means a shy or retiring nature. On the contrary, he
possessed that modest boldness which seems so natural to some people on
whom society looks with favor. If he were owner of a large estate
instead of this "hole"--as the Judge designated Niendorf--he would
rather have asked to-day than to-morrow if she would be his wife,
without too great a shyness of the money-bags. But as it was, he could
not, he must make his way a little first, and before he could do that,
who could tell what might have happened to Gertrude Baumhagen?
He bit his lip at the thought--the result was always the same. But was
a true heart nothing then, and a strong will? If the Judge were only
here so he could ask him--
During these thoughts he had lighted the lamp. There lay the card on
the table, which Aunt Rosalie had given him. "Arthur Fredericks." He
smiled as he thought of the little insignificant man to whom her sister
had given her heart, and he could not think of Gertrude as belonging to
him in any way. At last a return visit from him! And there were some
half effaced words written with a pencil.
"Very sorry not to have met you; hope you will come to a little supper
at our house the day after Christmas."
It was the first invitation to Gertrude's house. He wrote an acceptance
at once. Then he remembered that he had ordered the sleigh to go to the
city to do some errands there. He would send the hotel porter across
with the card.