Near the western boundary of the park stood the remains of the former
Castle Baumgarten. Of the entire structure, once surrounded by a fosse,
only a single tower--of considerable dimensions, however,--was left,
flanked on one side by the blackened ruin of an ancient wing of the
building. Sixty years previously, the old pile had been torn down. Its
possessor at that time, residing most of the year in foreign parts, had
erected "Villa Baumgarten" on the opposite side of the estate, near the
frequented road, in order that when in his own country he might "live
among his kind," and the grandly-hewn blocks of granite from the old
castle had been used in building the modern villa. The tower, with the
ruin adjoining it, had been spared as an ornament to the park. It
crowned an artificial mound covered with mossy turf. Its base was
encircled by a wilderness of woodland shrubs and plants, hedge-roses and
blackberry-vines crept in and out of the huge window-arches in the ruin
and nestled among its fragments, while the wild hop clambered
everywhere, covering the grim dark stones with a wealth of greenery.
This ruin, encircled by the water of the fosse, certainly answered the
end for which it had first been preserved; but the succeeding
generation, being of an eminently practical turn of mind, had drained
the ditch, and planted vegetables in the damp, rich soil. The castle
miller had declared upon purchasing the estate that this proceeding had
been the only sensible thing done by its former possessors, and had
appropriated this spot for his own special use. As a child, Kitty had
taken great delight in the "little valley," as she called the former
fosse. Of course, she then thought and knew nothing of how romance had
been outraged in this transformation; she would while away hours
wandering and plucking with Susie through the wilderness of bean-poles
and young pea-vines, never dreaming that if the dam should suddenly give
way the waters would overwhelm her with Susie and all the green
luxuriance.
Now, on the fifth day after her arrival, she found herself for the first
time in this retired part of the park, and paused bewildered. The
hop-vines still wove a leafless net-work about the walls, and the turf
on the mound showed as yet no green blade of grass, but the April
sunshine lay broad and full upon the ruin-crowned hill, throwing it into
picturesque relief against the background of dark firs that covered the
mountain-range in the distance. There was no trace of fresh mortar on
the walls to tell of modern repair, every stone was old, yet none were
wanting; the high arched windows in the tower, formerly closed by
decaying wooden shutters, gaped wide, and within the stone window-frames
the sunny, tremulous air glittered as if some imprisoned sunbeam were
weaving there a mysterious golden web. And fresh life was stirring
about the ruined ancestral home of the Von Baumgartens; above the
battlements of the tower white and coloured doves were wheeling in airy
flight, and from the thicket beneath the ancient chestnuts which flanked
it on the south, two roes came noiselessly and wandered about the hill.
The "little valley" had vanished; and, as of old, a shining stream
girdled the hill around, burying beneath its bubbling waters, as if no
human hand had ever usurped its bed, all that had once bloomed and
flourished there.
A bridge suspended by chains spanned the ditch, and, guarding its hither
side, lay a huge bull-dog, his head on his forepaws, keeping a watchful
eye upon the opposite bank of the stream.
"Here you have Moritz's Tusculum, Kitty," said Henriette, who was
leaning upon her sister's arm. "Once a castle-keep, with its
paraphernalia of instruments of torture and sighs of mortal agony; only
four months ago an undisputed refuge for owls, bats, and my doves; and
now drawing-room, bedroom, and even treasure-chamber, of the Herr
Councillor von Roemer. In truth, the place still looks ruinous enough,
almost as if the next strong wind would overthrow the walls, but all is
really strong and firm; and there, beneath those projecting stones,
Moritz's servant has his room; the fellow is to be envied."
Flora had come with them. "No accounting for tastes!" she said, drily,
with a shrug. "Really a striking and original idea for a plebeian
brain, eh, Kitty?" She passed her sisters and crossed the bridge. A
touch of her little foot thrust away the dog from her path, and she
ascended the hill. The roes fled timidly from her rustling silken
robes, the doves flew away from the lower window-sills, and the dog
growled, and slowly followed the lordly lady for a few steps. Standing
above, her slender hands upon the latch of the brazen-studded door of
the tower, and dressed in heavy light-gray silk, gleaming like silver in
the sunlight, with puffed sleeves and skirt caught up on one side, she
was the living impersonation of the beautiful emperor's daughter of the
Kyffhaeuser.
Involuntarily Kitty looked from her to Henriette, clinging to her arm,
and her heart ached. The frail figure, its emaciation showing plainly
in the close-fitting gay-coloured dress, was actually balanced upon
immensely high heels. Her breath came in short gasps; but her whole
costume was gaudy, and had so coquettish an air that but for pity one
could have laughed. Within the last few days she had had repeated
attacks of asthma, almost to suffocation, and yet she _would_ not be
ill: the world should not know that she suffered. A single
compassionate glance, any pitying remark, made her angry and bitter.
She had been more ill than usual; for Doctor Bruck, whose patient she
was, and who could always give her relief, was away. A few hours after
leaving the villa upon Kitty's arrival there, he had received a
telegraphic dispatch from a friend calling him to L----g, to remain
there for several days, he informed Flora in a short note. Any medical
aid from Doctor von Baer the sick girl persistently refused to accept.
"Rather die!" she had whispered, when struggling with one of her
attacks. Kitty had tended her sister with the greatest care, and now,
putting her arm around her waist, she led her across the bridge towards
the ruin.
How often as a child she had run up that hill and scrambled through the
underbrush! How often she had peeped through the big key-hole of the
door of the tower! The servants had said that in its cellars there was
still stored powder from the Thirty Years' War, and that the walls were
hung with "all sorts of horrid things." But she had never seen anything
within but black darkness. A heavy, mouldy air had been wafted out upon
her childish face with terrifying effect; and if an owl above happened
to flap his wings, she would rush down the hill as if pursued by the
furies, and cling with both hands to Susie's apron, quaking with fright.
Now she stood inside, at the foot of a narrow, carpeted winding
staircase, and admired the effect produced by the wealthy merchant's
money. Without, a crumbling ruin; within, the home of knightly ease.
The room her childish eye had never been able to pierce was a spacious
vaulted hall, the massive arches of which supported the entire structure
above. On the walls the "horrid things" were still hanging,--helmets
and various weapons,--but they were tastefully arranged, and flashed
back from their burnished surfaces the sunlight that streamed through
the windows. To preserve the ruinous aspect from without, there was no
division into panes of the glass in the windows; one unbroken sheet had
been set into the stone frames, hence the strange glitter in them when
seen from the outside. The place had been what was called in the olden
time a fortress ward; in times of supreme danger, a place of refuge for
the dwellers in the castle. As such, its upper story had been furnished
after the most primitive fashion; now, its splendour far eclipsed that
of the finest ancient banqueting-hall of the old castle, so long since
swept from the face of the earth. When the two sisters reached the first
room of the upper story they found Flora gracefully reclining among the
crimson cushions of a lounge, with a lighted cigarette between her
fingers, looking on while the councillor brewed the afternoon coffee in
the silver coffee-pot. He had invited his three sisters-in-law to take
coffee with him this afternoon.
"Well, Kitty?" he called out to the young girl upon her entrance,
directing her attention by a wave of his hand, as he spoke, to all that
he had effected.
She paused upon the threshold, a black veil thrown loosely over her
golden-brown braids, her eyes full of laughter, her young frame vigorous
and supple as if sprung from the giant knights Von Baumgarten.
"Most romantic, Moritz! The illusion is perfect!" she answered, gaily.
"That fellow down there," and she pointed through the nearest window to
the gleaming girdle of water, "might terrify us with his martial air,
did we not know that a councillor of commerce of the nineteenth century
sits within his circle."
He contracted his fine eyebrows, and cast from beneath them a dubious
glance at her face. She did not notice it. "It certainly was hardly
fair to grow turnips and cabbages in the bed of the fosse," she
continued. "I see that now, although the 'little valley' was a favoured
spot in my remembrance. Still, it is a strange and interesting fact,
that the merchant of to-day renews the barriers which even former
knightly lords of the soil wearied of and at last destroyed as
superfluous."
"Do not forget, my dear Kitty, that I myself now belong among these
latter," he replied, in a tone of considerable pique. "It is sad to
think that an ancient race should so adapt itself to the spirit of the
age as ruthlessly to abolish old and honourable customs and
institutions. It is a crying outrage upon us, their successors."
"Idiot! He is more Catholic than the Pope," Henriette muttered,
angrily. She advanced farther into the room, while Kitty mechanically
closed the door behind her without averting her half-startled,
half-thoughtful gaze from her brother-in-law. As a child she had, in
common with all who came in contact with him, been very fond of him.
His father had been an honest, hard-working mechanic, and Moritz, left
an orphan at an early age, of striking personal beauty and ingratiating
address, had been received as an underling in the establishment of the
wealthy banker Mangold, whose daughter he eventually married. Kitty
knew how devoted he had been to her sister Clotilde until she died; she
had always seen him submissive even to servility to her father, and he
had been uniformly amiable and kind even towards those beneath him; and
yet there was now hovering about those finely-chiselled lips a
distinctly-stamped expression of arrogance. The ropemaker's son was
contemptuously overthrowing the ladder by which he had climbed thus
high, and was so dazzled by his good fortune that he fell naturally into
the jargon of a genuine country squire.
Henriette had coiled herself up on a low cushioned seat, and, clasping
her hands around her knees, said, sharply, "Dearest Moritz, I pray you
do not take quite so much state upon yourself; you might provoke some
old mistress of these walls to awaken and see her grand successor and
lord of the castle making coffee, while the castle dame reclines
comfortably, smoking cigarettes. Oh, how she would stare!"
Flora did not stir a hair's-breadth from her position: she only took the
cigarette slowly from between her lips, and asked, in a tone of assumed
indifference, as she knocked off the ashes with her third finger, "Does
it annoy you, my dear?"
"_Me?_" Henriette turned towards her with a hard laugh. "You know I am
never annoyed by the freaks and follies of your genius, Flora; the world
is wide: it is easy to avoid"----
"Hush! don't be so bitter, child. I asked from the purest sympathy for
your poor chest."
The flitting crimson came and went upon the invalid's thin cheek, and
tears glittered in her eyes, but she controlled herself. "Thanks; but
expend your care first upon yourself, Flora. I know how your every
fibre is longing to throw that smoky thing out of the window, for it
discolours your white teeth like meerschaum, and sends a perpetual
shiver of disgust through you, and yet you persist in the heroic
self-subjugation. From a mania for the emancipation of woman? Pshaw!
you have far too much taste, Flora, to have recourse to such distinctive
signs of a blue-stocking, and you certainly would not sacrifice beauty
to a rage for public glorification and applause----"
"See what a lofty opinion the dear creature entertains of me," Flora
said to the councillor, shaking her head, and laughing ironically.
"You are practising smoking, and will probably continue to do so for
three or four weeks longer," Henriette continued, undeterred, but with
evident irritation, "because there are people who detest like the breath
of the plague the odour of tobacco from a woman's mouth. You are trying
to offend; this is your latest attempt to----"
Flora raised herself from her reclining posture. "And if it is,
Fraeulein Henriette?" she asked, with an air of lofty disdain. "Is it
not my affair, solely, whether I choose to attract or repel?"
"Not at all. Your only duty in this case is to please," Henriette
declared, with vehemence.
"Nonsense! There is no marriage ring here yet." And she pointed to the
third finger of her left hand. "Thank God, no! And you of all others
should be the last to lay a lance in rest in this cause. You are ill,
poor child, and more than ever dependent upon your physician; but he
prefers to take a pleasure-trip, and to remain weeks away perhaps,
assigning no reason for his absence."
Here the councillor put in a word. "Assigning no reason, Flora, because
he does not happen to have told you all the why and the wherefore of his
absence!" he exclaimed, with irritation. "Bruck never speaks of his
profession, or of anything connected with it, as you well know. He has
doubtless been summoned to some patient----"
"To L----g, where distinguished professors from the university can be
had? Ha! ha! a charming idea! Don't be ridiculous, Moritz! But this
is a point upon which I positively decline to argue with you." She held
out her hand for her coffee-cup, and slowly sipped the delicious
beverage. Henriette sullenly declined the offered refreshment; she
arose, and stepped to the glass door that led out upon the adjoining
ruin. It was the remains of a colonnade which had once connected the
tower with the castle, and two finely-vaulted arches, resting upon
slender pillars, now formed a kind of balcony whence there was a
magnificent view.
She tore open one of the glass folding-doors, and, pressing her clasped
hands convulsively to her breast, greedily inhaled the fresh air. In
vain; for a moment she seemed in danger of suffocation. Kitty and the
councillor hastened to support the sufferer, and even Flora arose and
reluctantly threw away her cigarette. "I suppose you will accuse these
harmless wreaths of smoke of causing this attack," she said, fretfully,
"but I know better. You ought to be in bed, Henriette, not out in this
dry spring air, which is positive poison for your disease. I warned
you, but you never heed advice, and would fain persuade us that you are
glowing with health and strength. And you are just as obstinate with
regard to your medical adviser----"
"Because I do not intrust my poor lungs to the first poisoner at hand,"
Henriette concluded her sentence in a weak but very decided tone.
"Oh, dear! you mean my poor old councillor of medicine," cried Flora,
smiling, and shrugging her shoulders. "Go on, child, if it pleases you!
I know nothing, it is true, about his medicines, but I can affirm that
he has never yet been so clumsy as----nearly to cut a patient's throat."
The councillor turned a pale face towards her and involuntarily raised
his hand, as if to stop the slanderous words upon her lips; he was
speechless as he timidly glanced at Kitty.
"Heartless!" gasped Henriette.
"Not heartless, but bold enough to call things by their right names,
even if the hard words make my own wounds bleed afresh. Where is the
merit else of uncompromising truth? Think of that terrible evening, and
ask yourself who was right! I knew that a fall from the heights of a
mere superficial adventitious celebrity was sure to come. It has come,
more disastrously and completely than even I feared, as you must admit
if you would not dispute the unanimous verdict of the public. That I
will not share this fall every one who knows me must be aware. I cannot
smooth over and adjust matters as grandmamma so well understands how to
do. I would not do so if I could. No part is more ridiculous than that
of those simple-souled women who continue openly to adore where the
world unites in pronouncing that there is nothing worthy of worship."
She opened the other folding-door and stepped out upon the balcony. She
had spoken with passionate emphasis; the pale marble tint of her Roman
profile, seen clearly cut against the blue sky of spring, glowed with a
gloomy fire; her eyes were full of disdain, her nostrils quivered
nervously,--she was the very personification of burning impatience.
"At least, it was his part to convince me.--How I would have defended
him then, both with tongue and pen!" she continued, thrusting her
slender fingers in among the rustling tracery of withered vines. "But
he chose to reply to my first and only question upon the subject, by an
icy look, haughty as a Spaniard----"
"Such a reply should have sufficed you----"
"Not so, my dear Moritz; it was a very convenient and easy answer, and I
am sceptical with regard to speaking looks and gestures: I require more.
But I show you that my will is good in the matter by repeating again
what I said at first: 'Prove to me and to the world that he did his duty
well, for you were present!'"
He retreated hastily from the threshold of the door and put his hand
over his eyes: the sunlight shining full upon the balcony was
insupportable to him. "You know well enough that I cannot do what you
ask; I am no surgeon," he replied, in a stifled tone, that was lost in
an almost inarticulate murmur.
"Not another word, Moritz," Henriette exclaimed. "Your every attempt to
defend him gives some colour to this girl's cowardly indecision." Her
large eyes, glowing with internal fever, were riveted with an expression
of hatred upon her sister's beautiful face. "It would be best that your
cruel designs should attain their end as soon as possible,--to speak
plainly, that your evident estrangement should induce him voluntarily to
break the bond between you. Your heart, cleaving as it does to mere
externals, would be small loss to him; but he loves you, and would
rather contract an unhappy marriage, knowing it to be such, than resign
you. His whole conduct proves this----"
"Unfortunately," Flora said over her shoulder, by way of interjection.
"And therefore I will stand by him, and defeat your machinations if I
can," Henriette concluded, in a louder voice, and with quivering lips.
The glance that Flora here bestowed upon her frail, agitated sister
sparkled with cruel scorn, but, as she looked, a startling revelation
seemed to dawn upon her; she suddenly put her right arm around
Henriette's shoulders, and drew her towards her, as she whispered in her
ear, with a sardonic smile, "Why not make him happy yourself, child?
You will meet with no opposition from me,--be sure of that."
To such wanton malice can vanity prompt a petted, spoiled, and
worshipped woman! Kitty stood near enough to understand the whisper,
and, although she had hitherto held herself passively aloof, her eyes
now fairly flashed with honest indignation.
Flora saw it. "Just look what a pair of eyes the girl can make! Can
you not understand a joke, Kitty?" she asked, half startled, half
amused. "I will not harm your petted nursling,--although it really
would be well to put a final stop to Henriette's petty malice. These
two people," she pointed to the councillor and Henriette, "imagine it
their duty to form my morals, and you, our youngest, just out of school,
your head filled with crochet, worsted-work, and a few French phrases,
side with them against me. You little goose, do you really think
yourself capable of passing judgment upon your sister Flora?" She
laughed aloud, and pointed to a chestnut-tree, from the boughs of which
a white dove was flying. The bird flew high in air, a dazzling point of
light. "Look, child, a moment ago it nestled amid the branches among
its fellows, now its outspread wings gleam like silver, and it hangs in
the blue, lonely firmament a shining spectacle for mortal eyes to gaze
upon. Perhaps you may one day stand what thirsting, aspiring soul it
resembles. Apropos, Moritz," she suddenly interrupted herself,
beckoning the councillor out upon the balcony, "the old barracks that
Bruck has just purchased must lie behind that grove,--I see smoke
curling above the trees----"
"Simply because there is a fire kindled upon the hearth," the councillor
replied, smiling. "The dean's old widow arrived there yesterday."
"And is in that miserable old place just as it is?"
"Just as it is. Indeed, the castle miller was too careful a man to
allow any of his property to go to ruin; there is not a nail wanting in
the house, not a slate missing on the roof."
"Well, I wish the widow Godspeed. Her old-fashioned furniture and the
late dean's portrait will suit those walls extremely well,--there will
be room enough for her pickle-jars and bake-oven,--and the water for
scouring runs past the very door." She affected a slight nervous
shiver, and, as though involuntarily, lifted her richly-trimmed skirt,
as if from a freshly-scoured floor. "We had better shut the doors," she
said, hastily retreating into the room; "the wind blows the smoke over
here. Pah!"--she waved her pocket-handkerchief in the air before her
face,--"I really believe the worthy woman is baking her everlasting
pancakes even before she has a chair in the house to sit down upon. She
is never content unless she is cooking." And she closed the
folding-doors.
In the mean time, Henriette had quietly left the room. She had started
in terror at Flora's whisper, like some sleep-walker who, on awaking,
finds himself on the brink of an abyss. She had not spoken since, and
had now mounted to the uppermost story of the tower, where the doves and
rooks had their nests. Kitty took up her parasol,--she knew that the
invalid always desired solitude when she thus withdrew from the society
of others; but this room within these thick walls, the oppressive
splendour on every side, and her domineering, capricious sister rustling
to and fro, had a most depressing effect upon the young girl. The air
that Flora breathed always seemed full of inflammable matter. Therefore
she determined to pay Susie a visit.
"Just as you please; go to the mill if you like," the councillor said,
fretfully, after in vain endeavouring to detain her; "but look here
first." He drew aside a heavy Gobelin curtain, and behind it, in a deep
recess, stood a new iron safe. "That belongs to you, you lucky child;
here is your 'Shake, shake, little tree, gold and silver over me.'" And
he passed his hand almost caressingly over the cold iron. "Everything
that your grandfather owned of real estate is in there, turned into
paper. Those papers are working for you day and night; you may draw
incredible sums of money from the world in this quiet corner. The
castle miller knew how to grasp fortune at the flood,--his will is proof
of that,--but even he could hardly dream how his wealth would increase
metamorphosed thus."
"So that you are on the way to become the best match in the country,
Kitty, and, like the man in the fairy-tale, can floor your dining-room
at your marriage with silver dollars," Flora cried, from the lounge,
where she was again reclining, with a book in her hand. "'Tis a pity!
Don't be angry, child, but indeed I am afraid you have been drilled in
too strait-laced a morality to know how to fling brilliantly abroad your
golden shower."
"Wait and see," laughed the young girl. "In the mean time, I have no
present right to take one dollar locked up there." She pointed to the
safe. "With regard to the castle mill, Moritz, I should like to attain
my majority, if only for a single day."
"Does it not suit you, 'lovely miller maid'?"
"My mill? As well as my vigorous youth, Moritz. But I was in the
mill-garden yesterday. It is so large that Franz is obliged to leave
all that portion bordering on the high-road uncultivated, for want of
time and labourers. He wishes to sell it to you,--it would divide very
well into lots for villas, and would be a good investment, he says; but
I think cottages ornees might just as well be built elsewhere, and I
would rather let your people, who wish to build near the factory, have
the land."
"Ah! make them a present of it, Kitty?"
"Such an idea never occurred to me. You need not smile so
compassionately and contemptuously, Moritz. Such 'exaggerated
sentimentality' would disgrace me, truly, in the Villa Baumgarten. And,
indeed, the people do not ask a gift or an alms, as Doctor Bruck
says----"
"Ah, 'as Doctor Bruck says'? Is he your oracle already?" cried Flora,
sitting upright on the lounge and fixing her eyes with a strange,
changeful expression upon her young sister's face.
Kitty's colour deepened for a moment, but she returned the gaze with
cool gravity, and continued, without paying any heed to Flora's words:
"I know, besides, how valuable is the fruit of one's own exertions. I
prize what I earn myself more highly than the richest gift, and upon
this ground the people should pay,--pay exactly what they offer for your
land."
"You show a fine capacity for business, Kitty," laughed the councillor.
"My barren strip of shore would be cheap enough at the price they offer;
and that piece of fine arable land near the mill! ... No, child; glad as
I should be to please you, my conscience as your guardian cannot allow
you to lay aside your minority for a single hour."
"Well, then, your enterprising 'hands' must content themselves for the
present," she rejoined, neither surprised nor irritated. "I know that
at the end of three years I shall think just as I do at present, and
maybe then I shall even be rash enough to lend the people the money for
their building, without interest."
She bade a smiling farewell, and left.