Neither spoke further. They soon reached the house, entering by a
side-door while the barouche was driving away from the front. A servant
informed them that the ladies and the Herr Councillor were in the
conservatory, in the Frau President's apartments.
Kitty had regained her self-possession. She handed her card to the
footman with a "For the Herr Councillor."
"So formal?" asked Doctor Bruck, smiling, as the lackey moved
noiselessly away and vanished.
"So formal," she assented, gravely. "The greater the distance
preserved, the better. It would scarcely become me to present myself
familiarly here. I am even afraid that my unannounced arrival may cause
the 'Herr Councillor' some embarrassment."
She was not mistaken. The councillor came rushing from within, almost
stumbling over the threshold in his eagerness, exclaiming, "Good
heavens, Kitty!"
His surprise was ridiculous, for he evidently looked to see his ward's
face two feet nearer the ground than he found it; and this well-grown,
graceful figure advancing towards him said, with an inclination full of
womanly pride,--
"Dear Moritz, do not be angry with me for not complying with your
suggestions. Indeed, I am rather too big to give you the trouble of
coming for me."
He stood astounded. "You are right, Kitty. The time is past when I
could lead you by the hand," said he, slowly, as if lost in
contemplation of her face, which was bathed in a rosy blush. "Well, you
are heartily welcome!" Then, giving his hand to Bruck, he added, "Ah,
you met in the hall. I must present you----"
"Don't trouble yourself, Moritz; I have attended to all that," the girl
interrupted him. "The Herr Doctor was paying his visit to Susie when I
reached the mill."
The councillor's face lengthened. "You went first to the mill then?" he
asked, surprised. "But, my dear child, Grandmamma Urach was most
amiably ready to receive you, and naturally expected that you would come
directly to her, instead of which you have been first to your old flame
Susie! Pray say nothing about it within," he added, in a hurried
whisper.
"Do you seriously desire that I should not?" The firm clear, girlish
tone contrasted strangely with his timid whisper. "I cannot deny it if I
should be questioned. I really do not understand concealment,
Moritz----" She paused a moment, startled at the sudden flush that
overspread his face, but concluded resolutely, "If I have done wrong, I
will confess it: it cannot cost me my head."
"Oh, if you take my well-meant hint so tragically, there is nothing more
to be said," he replied at once, with some irritation. "It will not
cost you your head, to be sure, but it will imperil your position in my
house. Just as you please, however. Judge for yourself what success
will await your direct 'up-and-down' tongue in our refined circles."
His tone had already changed to playfulness; and, before anything
further could be said to alter his amiable mood, he gallantly offered
his arm, and conducted her to the former dining-hall, adjoining the
conservatory, and opened the door.
Here was no longer the pleasant dining-room, with its comfortable
old-fashioned leather-covered furniture. The wall that had once
separated it from the conservatory had disappeared, and in its place
slender pillars upheld the arched ceiling, which was painted with
brilliant colours, after the Moorish style. Below, a grating of
delicate gilt-bronze tracery ran from pillar to pillar, separating the
mosaic floor of the Moorish room from the white sand and green sod of
the conservatory. Behind this grating there was a wealth of greenery and
bloom: tufts of May-flower and Parma violets grouped about the feet of
dark laurels, and dragon-trees, with hosts of metallic-leaved decorative
plants,--all this embowered, framed in, as it were, by the pillars,
around which were twined clematis-vines, that wreathed with white and
lilac flowers the slender shafts up to the graceful arches they
supported.
Between the two centre pillars Flora was standing, still in her
driving-dress, apparently on the point of leaving the room. The
fountain in the conservatory showed its silver spray just above the
plumes in her hat. One small gloved hand lifted the heavy brown velvet
skirt, which the evening light tinged with faint gold, while the other,
from which the glove had been withdrawn, rested lightly upon the pillar
beside her, as delicate and fair as the white clematis flower that hung
beside it.
As Kitty entered, she first opened her blue eyes wide with astonishment,
then half dropped the lids in a keen, inquiring glance, while a
sarcastic smile hovered upon her lips.
"Guess, Flora, who this is!" exclaimed the councillor.
"No need to puzzle long over that riddle; it is Kitty, who has made the
journey alone," she replied, in her careless yet decided manner. "It
would be impossible for any one who knew old Frau Sommer to doubt for a
moment that this stout girl, with a face like a rosy-cheeked apple, is
her grandchild; her eyes and hair, however, are strikingly like
Clotilde's, Moritz."
She lightly disengaged herself from the hanging flowers, approached her
sister, and, lifting the girl's chin, kissed her lips. Yes, this was
the same incomparable Flora; but her long-continued sway over the hearts
of men had robbed her actions of feminine tenderness. With the same
negligence with which she tendered a kiss to her sister after a
separation of six years, she greeted the doctor with a "Good-evening,
Bruck," extending her hand to him, not as if he were her lover, but
rather as though he were some fellow-student. He pressed slightly the
hand thus given, and acquiesced in its instant withdrawal.
This outward reserve between the lovers seemed to be an understood
affair. Flora turned gaily towards the conservatory, exclaiming, with a
mocking smile, "Grandmamma, our heiress presents herself to the admiring
gaze of yourself and your friends a month earlier than she was
expected."
At Flora's first words the Frau President made her appearance from
behind a group of camellias. Without being aware of it herself,
perhaps, she had been watching the new-comer with that keen attention
which most people are apt to bestow upon one whom men dub a favourite of
fortune. Flora's half-malicious remark quickly altered this expression,
however. The old lady knitted her brows disapprovingly, and a delicate
flush tinged her pale face. "I do not remember having displayed any
extraordinary interest in your sister's heiress-ship," she said, coldly,
with a stern glance of reproof. "If I take great pleasure in Kitty's
arrival, and welcome her most cordially, it is because she is my dear
lost Mangold's daughter, and your sister."
She approached Kitty with outstretched hands, as if to embrace her, but
the girl courtesied profoundly and formally, as if presented for the
first time to her father's haughty mother-in-law. A keen observer would
have seen in her conduct a shy recoil from all contact, but the Frau
President apparently regarded it as simply indicative of profound
respect. She withdrew her hands, and touched the girl's forehead with
her lips. "Did you really come alone?" she asked, and her eyes turned
towards the door, as if half fearing the entrance of some unwelcome
companion to her guest.
"Quite alone. I wished for once to try my wings unaided, and my Frau
Doctor willingly consented." As if unconsciously, she passed her
slender fingers across her forehead where the Frau President's cold lips
had rested for an instant.
"Ah, that I can easily believe; there I recognize old Lukas," Frau von
Urach rejoined, with a gentle laugh of irony. "She, too, was always very
independent. Your good father spoiled her a little, my child. She did
as she chose; of course only what was right----"
"And sensible, and therefore papa was glad to intrust his wild young
colt to her care," Kitty added, with all the frank gaiety natural to
her. This freedom of manner, however, seemed to produce an unfavourable
impression.
The Frau President slightly shrugged her shoulders. "Your father
certainly had your welfare at heart, my dear Kitty, and I made it a rule
never to object to any of his plans. But his nature was eminently
refined; he thought much of a due sense of decorum. Might he not,
perhaps, have slightly disapproved of his daughter's dropping down thus,
sans gene, unceremoniously in the midst of a household?"
"Likely enough," Kitty replied. "But papa would remember what blood
runs in this daughter's veins,"--and there was a wayward gleam in her
brown eyes. "'To wander when and where it would, ever beseemed the
miller's blood,' Frau President."
The councillor cleared his throat and carefully smoothed his silky
moustache, while the Frau President looked as dismayed as if an icy
blast had suddenly affronted her delicate face, and Flora burst into a
laugh. "O child of mortality, you are delightfully naive!" she cried,
clapping her hands "Yes, yes,--'To wander is the miller's joy,'" she
quoted. "Only let our youngest make her debut with such words on her
lips at Moritz's next grand soiree, grandmamma, and see how every one
will stare!" She looked at the old lady with merry malice, but Frau von
Urach had entirely regained her self-possession.
"I trust to your sister's inborn tact, my child," she said, as she
extended her hand in welcome to the doctor, smiling as she did so a
smile that just showed the tips of her teeth through her drawn lips and
left one in doubt whether it were sweet or sour.
"Tact, tact,--of much use that will be," Flora repeated, shaking her
head mockingly. "Her miller tendencies are just as much inborn. The
worthy Lukas has failed to inoculate her with a trifle of worldly
wisdom,--there's the rub. Indeed, I am really glad you are alone, Kitty;
I am sure we shall like you far better than if you were pinned to the
apron of your prosaic old governess."
Kitty had taken off her cap; the warm, odorous air had flushed her
cheeks. Thus, her head crowned with thick golden-brown braids, she
looked still taller.
"Prosaic? My Frau Doctor?" she cried, gaily. "No more poetical woman
lives."
"Indeed? Raves about the moon, I suppose, copies sentimental verses,
etc., or even composes them herself,--eh?"
The young girl's bright eyes were riveted for a moment upon the face of
the mocking speaker. "No, she does not copy verses, but quantities of
her husband's manuscript, because the printers of the medical
periodicals declare that they cannot possibly decipher his
hieroglyphics," she said, after a short pause. "She writes neither
verses nor romances: she has not the time; and yet she is full of
poetry. Ah, you smile just as you used to do, Flora, with those deep
lines at the corners of your mouth; but I no longer want to run away
from the sneer. There is a combative vein in me, and I maintain that
there is real poetry in the way in which my dear Lukas always knows how
to grasp the truest and best side of life, in her knowledge of how to
make home lovely and attractive, with beauty of various kinds peeping
out from every corner, and in the talent she shows for making her
husband, myself, and her chosen circle of friends content and happy."
As she finished, a shower of fresh violets came raining against her
breast, whence they fell to the floor.
"Brava, Kitty!" cried Henriette. She was standing in the conservatory,
close to the grating, her pale hands pressed to her panting bosom. "I
should like to have my arms about your neck this minute, but--just look
at me--would it not be ridiculous? You so thoroughly healthy, body and
mind, and I----" Her voice failed her.
Kitty threw down the cap she had in her hand and flew to her. She
tenderly embraced the poor, weak form, wisely suppressing the tears that
were ready to flow at sight of her sister's emaciated face.
Flora bit her lip. "Our youngest" had not only gained dignity of
appearance, but her clear eyes and outspoken tongue gave token also of a
courageous independence of thought and of speech that might possibly be
inconvenient at times. She was aware of a sudden foreboding that with
the advent of this vigorous girl a shadow was to fall upon her path.
She hastily took off her hat and passed her fingers through the curls
that had been flattened against her temples. "Did you really bring that
poetic traveller's-bundle all the way from Dresden?" she asked, drily,
with a glance at the knotted handkerchief hanging upon Kitty's arm.
The girl untied it and held out the dove to Henriette. "This little
patient belongs to you," she said. "The poor thing has been shot in the
wing. It fell upon the pavement in the mill-yard."
This betrayed her visit to the mill, but Frau von Urach did not appear
to have heard her last words; she pointed indignantly to the wounded
bird, and said to the councillor, in a tone of reproach, "That is the
_fourth_, Moritz."
"And my pet besides, my little Silver-crest!" exclaimed Henriette,
brushing away a tear of grief and vexation.
The councillor was quite pale with anger and dismay. "Dear grandmamma, I
pray you do not blame me!" he cried, almost with violence. "I do my
very best to trace these abominable outrages to their source, and to
prevent them, but their perpetrators are concealed in the ranks of two
hundred angry men,"--he shrugged his shoulders,--"and there is nothing
to be done. Therefore I have repeatedly entreated Henriette to confine
her doves until the excitement is over."
"Then it is we who are to submit? Better and better," said the old
lady, satirically; and, as she spoke, she loosened and adjusted the
cloud of lace about her face and throat, as if her agitation made her
insufferably warm. "Can you not see, Moritz, that such compliance
fairly challenges insolence? They will soon tire of permitted
dove-shooting, and aim at some nobler game."
"Why dress the matter in such phrases, grandmamma? They themselves do
not scruple to speak plainly," Flora remarked, carelessly. "My maid
found another threatening letter on the window-sill when she opened the
shutters this morning. She was forced to pick up the dirty scrap of
paper with the tongs to let me read it, and it is now in her room, in
case you wish it preserved, Moritz. Of course it contains nothing
new,--the same old story! I should really like to know why these men
honour me so especially with their hatred of a class."
Kitty could not help thinking that in this case the hatred was not so
much of a class as of an individual. She could easily understand how
this queenly figure, apparelled in rich garments, with scornful lines
about her mouth and a masculine address, might well be held responsible
by outsiders for all that emanated from the house.
"Their low attacks are all the more ridiculous, since I am particularly
interested in the social question," Flora continued, with a short laugh,
"and I have given to the world several telling articles in favour of the
working-classes."
"Nothing can be effected nowadays by mere writing," Doctor Bruck said,
from the window where he was standing. "The most gifted pens have
written unweariedly upon the subject, and the waves of popular agitation
rise higher and higher, and float all their theories from the paper."
Every eye turned towards him. "Ah! and what is to be done, then?" Flora
asked, sharply.
"Meet the people and their demands face to face. What avails it to
collect laboriously all the evidence 'for and against' from the mass of
memorials and pamphlets that cumber your writing-table----"
"Oh, pray----" And her eyes lit up with sudden fire.
"And add your mite to the pile of dead published matter?" he went on,
undeterred. "These people will scarcely read your articles, and if they
should, what good would it do them? Words cannot build homesteads for
them. The larger part of the solution of this problem belongs to the
women of the families of our capitalists, to their mild influence in
modifying masculine severity, their gentle mediation, their wisdom. But
very few take the trouble to reflect upon the matter, or, what is more
important than all else, to question their own hearts. They require at
the hands of the men the means for providing for their needs, which at
the present day are almost boundless, and never consider that the
elements of a fearful conflict are gathering and growing at their very
doors."
The Frau President slowly passed her slender hands down the satin folds
of her gown, and, without heeding the last remark, said, complacently,
"I like to give, but I am not used to put my alms directly into the
hands of my beneficiaries myself, and thus it may easily occur that the
number and value of my charities are not known. I am quite willing to
have them ignored, even although I am thus made responsible, as it were,
for the barbarities to which we are daily exposed."
"These barbarities are detestable. No one can condemn them more
severely than I," Doctor Bruck rejoined, in a tone as cold as her own,
"but----"
"Well, 'but'? You still maintain that we women of the capitalists'
families have provoked them?"
"Yes, Frau President. You have deterred the capitalist from coming to
the assistance of his people when their demand was not unreasonable, not
one of those extravagant requirements that at present cast suspicion and
discredit upon the cause of an entire party. They did not ask for
charity, but simply to be allowed, with the help of their employer, to
struggle upwards to a happier daily life."
The old lady tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and said, kindly, but
in a curt, decisive tone, evidently intended to cut short all
discussion, "You are an idealist, Herr Doctor."
"Only a philanthropist," he rejoined, with a faint smile, and took his
hat to go.
Flora had turned her back to him, and walked to the other window. There
never was a woman's face more fitted to express enmity than was that
clear-cut profile, that mouth so closely shut over the teeth. Had not
the man plainly said that she had laboriously sought to collect the
ideas of others?--she, with her talents! To be sure, she had never
soiled her dainty foot with the dust of her brother-in-law's factory; it
was true that she knew nothing of the life of those people whom the
clamour for reform had assembled beneath one banner, where they were
grown to be a power that thrust itself like a wedge into social order,
threatening to shatter it. And why need she know by sight and contact
what she described? Nonsense! Of what use, then, were intellect and
imagination? Until to-day the doctor had never uttered a syllable with
regard to her literary efforts,--"from timid reverence," she had
supposed,--and now he suddenly treated her work with such scant
courtesy,--_he_! "I cannot conceive, grandmamma," she exclaimed, with
flashing eyes, "how you can dignify him with the title of idealist. To
my mind, Bruck handles the great subject prosaically enough. According
to his plan, we must instantly strip ourselves of every elegance and
comfort, and dress in sackcloth and ashes; never must we indulge in
intellectual pursuits, but must concoct soup for the poor. To insist
upon quiet and retirement in our own park is a deadly sin; of course we
must encourage the hopeful school-children to romp and play directly
underneath our windows, etc., etc.; and if we are not docile, he
threatens us with a ghost at our doors." She laughed a short, hard
laugh. "Our philanthropist overshoots the mark terribly with these
sympathies of his. If the conflict that he foretells ever really comes
to pass, the ghost will make as short work with him as with us."
"I have not much to lose," the doctor said, with a smile.
Flora hastily approached him. Her curls stirred lightly, and her heavy
velvet skirt swept the marble floor.
"Oh, since this morning that is not true, Bruck," she said, ironically.
"You are a real-estate owner, Moritz tells me. Seriously, have you
fulfilled your yesterday's threat and purchased that wretched barracks
on the other side of the river?'
"My threat?"
"What else can I call your presenting to me such a picture of the
future? You have, as you spoke of doing yesterday, invested your
savings in a spot that is to me the _ne plus ultra_ of desolation,
poverty, and repulsive ugliness. You certainly cannot have possessed
yourself of this gem simply to feast your eyes upon its beauties, and
therefore I ask you seriously, 'Who is to live there?'"
"You never need cross the threshold."
"I certainly never shall,--you may rely upon that. Rather----" The
glance with which the doctor raised his hand to interrupt her was a
riddle hard to read, but it had such power in it that it silenced those
beautiful lips.
"I purchased the house for my aunt, only reserving one room in it for my
use,--a corner where I can enjoy a leisure hour of study amid rural
surroundings," he said, immediately, and far more placidly than could
have been anticipated from the former expression of his face.
"Ah, I wish you joy of it! A special summer retreat! And in winter,
Bruck?"
"In winter I must content myself with the green room, which you have
assigned me in our future dwelling."
"To tell the truth, that house does not please me. There is such
constant noise from the street about a corner house, it would greatly
disturb me when I wanted to work."
"Well, then, I will simply pay off the house-agent, and look for
another," he rejoined, with imperturbable equanimity.
Flora turned away with a shrug, so that Kitty could look directly into
her face. It seemed as if she would have stamped upon the floor with
vexation, while her head was thrown back and her eyes sought the
ceiling, as if to say, "Gracious heaven, is there no way to reach him?"
At that moment the Frau President rang the bell so sharply that the
sound echoed from the end of the long corridor. The old lady looked
greatly aggrieved; explanations so devoid of all taste and tact as these
should never take place in her presence. "You can scarcely have a high
opinion of the hospitality and breeding of your brother's household,
Kitty," she said to the young girl. "No one has taken off your
travelling-jacket or offered you a chair; you are forced instead,
whether you will or not, to listen to useless discussions, and left
standing upon the cold marble, while warm rugs are at hand." She
pointed, as she spoke, to two opposite corners of the room, furnished
with luxurious chairs and lounges and laid with costly Smyrna rugs, and
then she gave orders to the servant who entered to instruct the
housekeeper with regard to apartments for the guest.
Thus the bystanders were relieved of the disagreeable sensation left in
their minds by the sharp interchange of words between the lovers. The
councillor hastened to relieve his ward of her jacket, and Henriette,
her wasted cheeks flushed with a feverish colour, left the conservatory
to attend to her dove.
"Will you not stay to tea, Herr Doctor?" Frau von Urach asked the
physician, as he came to take leave of her. He excused himself on the
plea of visits to patients,--a plea which Flora heard with a sarcastic
smile. This, however, he did not appear to notice. He shook hands with
her and with the councillor; to Kitty he made a chivalric and respectful
inclination, not at all as if to a new young sister-in-law: she was
still a stranger to him, and the others appeared to find this view of
the matter entirely correct. Henriette left the room with him.
"My dear Flora, I must for the future strictly forbid the recurrence of
such distasteful scenes as this which we have just been compelled to
witness," the Frau President said, in a stern voice and with a deep
frown, as soon as the door had closed upon the pair. "You have reserved
to yourself entire freedom to attain your end in the manner that shall
best please yourself; so far so good,--you have hitherto encountered not
the slightest opposition on my part; but I protest earnestly as soon as
you show an inclination to fight out the wretched affair in my presence.
As I said before, that I strictly forbid! Must I repeat----"
"Dear grandmamma," the young lady interrupted her, in a tone of
contemptuous banter, "do not repeat! I know it all. Commit murder or
arson, if you will, in this house, only see that the Frau President
Urach arises like a phoenix from the ashes. Forgive me, grandmamma; I
will never do so again. The house is large enough; I need not carry out
my designs directly in your sight. If my work were only not made so
immensely difficult! I am afraid that some fine day I shall lose
patience and----"
"Flora!" the councillor exclaimed, in a voice expressing both warning
and entreaty.
"Yes, yes, Herr von Roemer, I perfectly understand that I must pay due
regard to your new honours. Heavens! how my poor shoulders are weighted
down! And why should I do penance because hearts cling to me like
burrs?"
She took her hat, and gathered up her train to go,--then paused as she
passed Kitty.
"You see, my dear," she said, putting her forefinger beneath her
sister's chin and turning her face up to her, "this all comes of a poor
girl's giving way to sentiment for a moment and imagining herself in
love. She suddenly finds herself in a trap, and admits sorrowfully that
the trite old doctrine, 'See, ye who join in endless union, that heart
with heart be in communion,' contains a terrible truth. Think of your
sister, and take care of yourself, child."
She left the room, and Kitty looked after her in wide-eyed wonder. What
a strange fiancee her beautiful sister was!