there never came any more; every new girl was free to work her own will
on Miss Wing's romance. Was "Max" dead? Had they parted because of any
act on the woman's part? Surely he could not have been false, to receive
that daily oblation of flowers. It was more likely that she thus
expressed an imperishable regret. Youth, ever fanciful, played with all
manner of dainty and plaintive variations on the theme. Its very mystery
was its poignant charm; since each tender young soul created a new
romance and a new appeal. Elusive and pathetic, it hovered on the edge
of these young lives, like the perfume of a flower. And its influence
was the more potent that it asked for nothing. It is not too much to say
that the spectacle of that gentle and reticent faithfulness was the
strongest element in the school atmosphere. Certainly, because of it,
Miss Wing had greater power over her scholars. She was a woman of
ability and gentle force; by nature a little aloof, a little precise,
able to feel deeply, but not able to express her sympathies or her pain.
Without her mysterious sorrow, she would have seemed to young girls a
thought too admirable; they would have been chilled by her virtues; but
as it was, their perception that she had lived deeply, that she had
suffered, that she had been loved and had loved eternally, opened their
hearts. They would have admired her, now they adored her. By degrees,
and insensibly to herself, she became the confessor of her little
world. After they left school, her girls brought her their perplexities
of the heart. Wives came to her with cruel dilemmas which they shrank
from revealing to their own mothers--perhaps because the mothers could
not be trusted to plead for the erring husband so well; for a woman who
loves complains, not to be justified herself, but to hear her lover's
misconduct excused and his love proved against her doubts. Before they
left school, the girls confessed their faults and failings and strivings
of conscience with the same eagerness with which they asked counsel in
their innocent romances of friendship or the sorrows of trigonometry,
and they accepted any penance directed, not only with patience, but a
kind of exaltation natural to youth, which finds a secret joy in the
exercise of its own fortitude.
To-day, however, Miss Wing sat before the picture which so many young
eyes had studied with such vague, yet ardent, sympathy, and pondered
over a confidence that had not come. The lack of its coming hurt her;
and the tap on her door was welcome, for she thought, "It is she--coming
to tell me. Oh, I hope he is the right man."
At her response, the door swung open with a jerk, and the dark-eyed girl
who entered was catching her breath, although she tried to make the
quick intakes noiseless. There was a look of pale resolution on her
features.
"Have you come to let me congratulate you, my dear?" said the principal,
rising. The girl colored scarlet. "I've come because I had to, because I
couldn't deceive you," she blurted. "Miss Wing, it isn't so. I let Miss
Parker think so; but I'm not engaged to him."
"Sit down, dear," said Miss Wing. The soft cadence of her voice did not
roughen. She sat down when her guest sat, and leaned back in her desk
chair, folding her slim, white hands. There were flashing rings on her
hands; and the girls used to wonder which ring "Max" had given her. They
favored the sapphire, set between two diamonds, because of its beauty
("a real Cashmere, you know"), and because, whether she wore other rings
or not, this always kept its place.
"Now, tell me," said Miss Wing.
"I had a letter from him this morning; it was just a note in one of
Helen Grier's"--the girl's lithe form was erect in the chair, every
muscle tense; she looked past Miss Wing to the wall and spoke in
toneless voice; no one could see that she was driving straight on to her
purpose, over her own writhing nerves--"all he said was that he had been
called back to Germany--"
"Is he a German? Miss Parker said his name was Cutler."
"It is Butler," the girl said, flinging her head back, while a spark
crept into her liquid, troubled, dark eyes, "but he _is_ a German. Don't
you know the Butlers in 'Wallenstein?' You know he was a real man; and
he founded a family. He--my--my friend is the Count von Butler." Miss
Wing's chair, like other desk chairs, was set on a pivot; she turned
very slightly and slowly, at the same time resting her elbow on the
desk. The girl ventured a timid glance at her, and thought that she
looked sterner, wherefore her heart sank; but she only continued the
faster: "He isn't in America just to travel; he was sent by his
government to watch the Cuban war. He's very brave; and he isn't a bit
like a foreigner and hasn't any nasty supercilious notions about women.
Mr. Grier says he has a _future_. And really, Miss Wing, he is just
like a--a--a kind of knight."
"Where did you meet him?"
"At Helen's last summer. And he was going out to Minneapolis to see
papa, I--I think. But he got a cable of his uncle's death. And his two
little cousins died last year; so now he is the head of the family; and
he must go to Germany at once. For his father is dead, you know. So he
wrote (in Helen's letter, because he is so--so awfully proper!) asking
to let him come here and take me to drive--in the American fashion. I
know who put him up to that scheme; it was Helen. I had to ask Miss
Parker, because you were out; and she said if he wasn't a relation or
the man I was going to marry I couldn't go. 'Of course, if he were the
man you expect to marry,' she said, and--and I--I said, 'But he is!'
Just like that. I can't fancy how I came to say such a thing, but when
it was said I didn't know how to explain; and I was so awfully ashamed;
and, besides"--she lifted her eyes in the frank and direct gaze that
Miss Wing always liked--"besides, I do want to see him."
"And do you expect him to ask you to marry him?" said Miss Wing, with a
deepening of the color on her cheek, which went out suddenly like the
flame of a lamp in the wind.
Florence Raimund blushed again, but this time she laughed: "I don't
know. He is so awfully proper," said she, "and he hasn't had a chance to
ask papa; but--I think he wants to."
"In that case, isn't he the man whom you expect to marry?" asked Miss
Wing dryly. "But it was deceiving her just the same. I am glad you came,
Florence."
Here the girl looked up; and something in Miss Wing's eyes made her dash
across the room to fling herself on her knees before that lady with an
inarticulate gasp between a sob and a laugh, and the sentences came in a
rush: "I _had_ to come! I couldn't deceive you if I never saw him again.
And besides, I hoped you would think of some way!"
"And you escape quite unpunished?" said Miss Wing gently.
At which the black head sank lower, while a smothered voice mumbled: "Do
you think I--_liked_ it, coming to tell?"
Miss Wing smoothed her hair. "It would have pained me very much if you
had not come. Tell me; whether he sees you or not, will he not write to
your father? Do you think his feeling is so slight that a disappointment
will turn it?"
The black head threw itself up bravely and the fearless young eyes met
Miss Wing's pensive brown ones. "No, Miss Wing, I know it will make no
difference."
Miss Wing stifled a sigh; it may be that she was not so sure of the firm
purpose of a lover; she spoke more gently: "It is only the
disappointment, then, if you can't see him?"
The girl's face quivered a little.
"Perhaps I am foolish," said Miss Wing, "but I think it _would_ be a
disappointment very hard to bear. Still, you must admit that parents do
not send their children to school expecting them to become engaged to be
married; on the contrary, there is a tacit pledge that we shall protect
our wards from any entanglement. But this did not happen at school; the
only question is, ought I to prevent it going any farther? My dear, do
you have confidence in me?"
"Yes, Miss Wing," said the girl.
"Of course, I do not think that I ought to consent to your driving alone
together."
The girl drew a long sigh. "I suppose not," she breathed, in dismal
resignation.
"But I should like him to come here, to see me; and then, if I find him
to be what your father would approve, you may see him here; and we shall
all have to explain things together, I fancy, to your father."
The girl drew another, a very different, sigh, and impulsively kissed
Miss Wing's hand. She tried to speak, and could only murmur, "Oh, I do
love you!"
"And so, if you will tell Graf von Butler--what is his Christian name,
Florence?"
"Max," said the girl, very low, for she felt the presence of the
picture, on which she had not once turned her eyes. Before she spoke,
under a pretense of a pull at her skirt, she slipped her hand out of the
hand with the sapphire ring. Yet her excited young nerves vibrated at
the slight cough which came as the principal changed her position,
before she said, in her usual tone: "It is a fine name. Well, Florence,
you will tell Count Max von Butler that I shall hope to see him.
And--will you trust me?"
The girl told her that she would trust her utterly, and she knew that
it would be right; and oh, she was so happy. And she came back to say,
with the tears in her eyes, "I shall be grateful to you as long as I
live."
Miss Wing stood in the center of the room, smiling, until the door
closed. But then in a second she was at the door, almost fiercely, but
noiselessly, twisting the key in the lock. From the door she passed to
the windows and dropped the shades. At last, safe from every chance of
espial, she sat down again in her chair before the desk, leaned her
elbows on the desk, and looked desperately, miserably, into the joyous
face of the picture. She did not speak, but her thoughts took on words
and sank like hot lead into her heart. "Max Butler! Max Butler! The
little nephew he told me about. And _he_ has been alive all these years;
and happy; with little sons, while I--I have lied to these trusting
girls. It was wicked and shameless. I deceived myself; then I deceived
them. I wonder why. I knew what they were thinking. How dare I look that
honest child in the face! I suppose she wonders like the rest why I have
not told any one of my romance. And it is simply that there was nothing
to tell. Nothing." She looked into the soldier's happy eyes while her
lips curled and she murmured, drearily and bitterly, "I haven't even the
right to be angry with you, poor lad. What did you do? _You_ are not my
Max; I only made him up out of my heart--like children playing a game!"
Her mind drifted dizzily through shapeless and inconsequent visions of
the past. She was seeing again the grim pile of the ruined castle, the
masses of broken shadow, the intricate carving on arch and architrave
and plinth, the wavering mass of limbs and tree-trunks on the green
sward; and she, with her twisted ankle, was kneeling, trying to peer
through the shrubbery for her lost companions. Did he come by chance?
She had seen the handsome young officer daily, for a week. His
great-aunt was Margaret's right-hand neighbor at the pension table
d'hote, a withered relic of Polish nobility with fine, black eyes in a
face like a hickory nut; who wore shabby gowns and magnificent jewels,
frankly smoked cigarettes, and seemed to have a venomous tale ready to
fit any name mentioned in conversation--with one exception, her
nephew's. According to her, Max's father was a swine and his mother a
fool and his brother a popinjay, and his sister had no respect for her
betters; but Max had a heart. It was understood at the pension that she
was arranging a great match for him. In spite of the general disapproval
of his aunt, he was a favorite, he was so simple, amiable, and polite.
Even the American professor admitted that for a man "who had won the
iron cross in such a spectacular fashion, he was very modest and really
more like an American than a German officer," thus paying the
unconsciously arrogant compliment kept by every race for engaging
aliens. Margaret's first sight of him was not under the shelter of
conventionalities. It happened that the countess' ferocious pet (and the
terror of the pension), a Great Dane, was trying to eat up a little
girl, but fortunately had begun with her petticoats. The court of the
house was the scene of the fray; a large, timid cook, the only witness,
was waving a copper kettle full of the meringue that she was beating, in
one hand, and the great wire whip in the other, while she shrieked
impartially on Heaven and the police. Margaret heard the din. She ran to
the spot. Being a New England woman, she didn't scream; one swift glance
went from the child's writhing body and the dog's horrible head to the
wailing cook. In two strides she caught the kettle out of a fat and
agitated German hand and hurled the whole sticky, white mass full at the
dog's eyes; then, as the blinded and astounded beast flung his head back
to howl, and spattered the world with meringue, she snatched up the
child and sent her flying into the door and the cook. The dog was
smeared with meringue, she was smeared, the child was smeared, the cook
was smeared; and now a beautiful white and gold officer, who bounded
over the wall and fell upon the dog with his saber and two heels, was
smeared the most lavishly of all! No wonder Frau Mueller (visible aloft,
in an artless German toilet of ease and without her teeth), the countess
(who was a gazing stock, for the same reason), and Augustine, her maid,
the three Russians on the second floor, and the three Americans on the
third, filled the windows with polyglot consternation! The consequence
of it all was that when the Count von Butler was formally presented to
Miss Wing that evening, she blushed. She was too pale and listless to be
pretty, but when she blushed she was enchanting. Remembering the
meringue, she smiled and ventured an upward glance; and, for the first
time in her life, met the admiration in the eyes of a man. At this time
Margaret was thirty years old and had never been asked in marriage. She
had spent most of the thirty years in a boarding-school, as pupil or as
teacher; and she had brought from her cloistered life a single vivid
feeling, a passionate friendship which death had ended. The sapphire
ring was her poor friend's last token.
To be thirty and never to have been sought like other girls, leaves a
chill in the heart. It may be lonely never to have loved, but it is
bleak never to have been loved. Margaret remembered her delicate,
girlish dreams with a recoil of humiliation; they seemed to her almost
immodest. She thought she was too old to wear hats, and wondered whether
she ought not to discard the pinks and light blues which poor Elly had
liked on her, for more sedate colors. But she wore pink after she met
Max Butler. Yet he never saw her save in the presence of others. He was
full of little, graceful attentions, but he showed the same attentions
to the portly clergyman's widow and the meritorious but cross-eyed
teacher of fifty, who formed Miss Wing's "party"; it was only his eyes,
his eyes always following her, approvingly, delighting, admiring,
pleading, speaking to her as they spoke to no other woman. She told
herself that it was just the pleasant, foreign way; and she wrote to her
friends in America, "The German officers have very agreeable,
deferential manners; I think they are much more gentle and polite and
have a higher respect for women than the French or Italians." And he
said no word, even of friendship, until that afternoon at the
Heidelberger Schloss.
He came upon her almost immediately, scrambling up the bank at a rate
which had worked woe to his uniform. He was torn, he was scratched, he
was stained with mud and grass; and he was beaming with delight. "I have
seen you from below," he exclaimed in his careful English, "so I came
up. Will you excuse?" Then his mood changed, perceiving her plight, and
he insisted on tearing his handkerchief into strips to bind her ankle.
It seemed absurd to refuse his aid, which he offered quite simply; but
his hands trembled a little over the knots. "It will be most easy, I
think," said he, "that you should let me assist you a small way, to the
_restauracion_; so I can get the carriage, and you can have some ice
cream. Again, to-day, is it burned--"
She had laughed and said that she never had heard of burned ice cream.
He laughed, too, and explained that it was burned as a custard, and
somehow under cover of this she let him put her hand on his shoulder and
his arm about her waist. She was grateful to him for the matter-of-fact
manner in which he did it all, saying, "You will have to be my comrade
that has been wounded, and I will help him off the field; so I did,
once, with my colonel; it is better than to wait until I could bring
help." In this fashion they walked for some twenty minutes. They were
minutes not entirely disfigured by her physical pain, for it was a
comfort to be helped by so strong and kind a friend. The comfort
brightened almost into pleasure, as they drove homeward in a shabby
_droschky_, with all the circuit of the horizon flooded with softest
rose and gold, reflecting the cloudless glory of the west. Borne along
through that unreal and lovely radiance, past the hills checkered with
vineyards and ripening grain, which the sunlight blazoned in green and
gold like the initials of an old missal; they talked as one friend would
talk to another. At least that was her phrase, and she admitted to
herself that she had not been so nearly happy since Elly died. "I didn't
know a man could be so--so kind," she said.
He told her of his country and his home; and how he loved the hills that
his fathers had always owned, and the rugged, simple, faithful people;
he told her of the plans of his father and himself for them; he told her
of his father, who had the best heart in the world, but was credited
with a fierce temper simply because his voice was loud; and his mother,
who was so gentle that every one loved her; and his handsome sister, and
his brother, who was a diplomat and far cleverer than he; and his little
brother who died and would have no one carry him in his pain but Max
("Ah, he was the most clever and the most beautiful of us all!"), and
Max, his little nephew, who looked like the dead boy. "I hope you will
see my home and them all," he said; "to-morrow, I shall see them, then,
the same day, I shall be back here--with you."
And then, by degrees, she won him to talk of his profession, of his
hopes, his ambitions, his ideals; of all those intimate and cherished
things which lie at the bottom of the soul and only rise for a friend's
eyes. It seemed to her that she could read his character in the hints
given by his words, as one would fill an outline sketch with perspective
and details. There was certainly a fascination in this revelation;
candor, after all, was a virtue, as well as reticence. Perhaps her new
friend was a little mediaeval, but he was as refined as if he had been
all modern.
By now they were rattling through the modern town of Heidelberg, the
plain walls of which looked bare after the lawless pomp of carving and
form on the old castle; they had not even the bizarre, affected grace of
the architecture then decking American countrysides. But Margaret
thought how homelike and honest the houses looked; staunch and trusty,
like the German. Butler, just then, was praising American buggies, from
which he made a general transition to the customs of society. "In
America, is it not," says he, "the young ladies drive alone with young
men?"
"Yes, very often. But not with you?"
"Oh, no, _mein fraulein_, this is the first time I am alone with a young
lady!"
She had called herself old for so long that there was a distinct
pleasure in being "a young lady" to him, and she had not time to
remember it partook of the nature of deceit, because he sent a wave of
confusion over her by continuing: "In America, also, one would propose
marriage to a lady, herself, before to her father?"
"It is our custom," agreed Margaret, "but"--with her prim teacher's
air--"your custom is far more decorous."
His face fell, then promptly brightened. "Perhaps it would be best to
speak to both, so near the same time one can. But this is another thing
you must explain me. How is it most preferable to the lady, that one
shall write or shall come--"
"Oh, write," said Margaret quickly. How silly of her to suddenly feel so
frightened; she wished that she were in a room and not in a carriage
with him; involuntarily she shrank back into her own corner, and she
found that she was playing with the soiled and frayed edges of a tear in
the cloth of the side-curtain and watching her pearl-colored fingers.
Those gloves she had put on new, that day. How reckless! But she had not
the resolution to desist. His voice dragged a little, "Ah, yes, if she
would refuse, but if--_not_?"
"In any case," said she.
"Look!" he exclaimed, "at the sunset. Ah, is it not lovely?"
Of a sudden they were looking, not at the sunset, but into each other's
eyes; and all about them was that wonderful, transfiguring glow, and it
seemed as if there were nothing in the whole world that he had not said.
"Is it to the right, Herr Captain?" asked the driver, turning on his
seat to divide a benign and semi-intoxicated smile between them.
Then it was hardly a moment until the yellow stucco of the pension
jumped at their eyes, around a corner; and there were the clergyman's
widow and the teacher at the door. They fell upon the carriage in a
clamor of explanation and sympathy; they were at her side when he bowed
over her hand and kissed it, saying, "_Aufwiedersehen_."