Twilight already reigned in the hall, which looked towards the north,
but in the kitchen the last red gleam from the west played upon the
walls and fell upon the red tiled floor.
The dean's widow stood there by the window, washing the tea-cups that
had been used. The cook-maid whom she had been obliged to dismiss was
to return on the morrow; she had been ill, and the chief household
duties were therefore still performed by the old lady. She nodded
kindly to Kitty and smiled: not the least suspicion of what was going on
behind the opposite broad folding-door disturbed her gentle spirit. The
young girl shivered, and hurried past her into the garden.
It had grown very cool. A strong breeze came blowing into her face and
over her unprotected shoulders from the river. She ran towards it. Her
temperament was sensitive, prone to emotion; the warm blood of youth
circled in her veins; cheeks, eyes, her whole frame even to her tingling
finger-tips, glowed, aflame with indignant agitation.
It had been terrible, that struggle between two human souls. And the
guilty one, who alone was to blame for it, was her sister,--a faithless,
frivolous woman, who could lightly bind the tie that should pledge her
to a man for life, only to sever it at her wayward will, as if it were
the merest summer gossamer floating on the air! This time, indeed,
Flora had reckoned falsely: where she had expected to tread beneath her
feet a heart subdued to submission by public condemnation and her own
systematic ill treatment, she had encountered steel. But what would the
firmness and energy with which he defied her avail him? He must
succumb----
Kitty stepped upon the bridge, and, resting her hands on the frail
balustrade, looked down. The waters rushed beneath her feet, struggling
against every stone that maintained its place in the bed of the stream,
every root that projected from the shore, and in the struggle dashing up
mimic showers of spray; but at a little distance the pale crescent moon
was mirrored in its depths as though nothing could ever efface it. Was
love thus steadfast in the human heart? Could the fiercest struggles
beat around it in vain? Did it never fade, although its ideal were
shattered? No; she had just seen that it did not.
Wondrous indeed must be this passion of love! Once already beneath that
very roof it had hounded on a human soul through every stage of misery
and despair. Many years before, as the dean's widow had related to
Kitty on one of their homeward walks, the lovely young widow of a Baron
von Baumgarten had lived in the house by the river. Her husband's heir
and successor, the scion of a collateral branch, a handsome young
cavalier, had daily come from his inherited castle to have one look at
the lovely face shrouded in its widow's weeds. He might not enter the
house, for she transgressed no bounds that custom had assigned to a
young widow. But he would ride across the narrow bridge on his black
steed and rein in the foaming fiery charger close to the wall of the
house, that he might inhale the air she had breathed and kiss devotedly
her small white hand. Those who saw him declared that when her period
of mourning was past the beautiful widow would once more reign as
mistress in Castle Baumgarten.
But once he was absent for some months at a foreign court, and it was
rumoured that he would bring home with him a bride of noble birth. The
fair young widow, when this rumour reached her ears, only smiled, and
watched for him all the more constantly from her window. She never
credited such treachery until the sound of trumpets and revelry from the
castle announced the lord's return with his proud, stately bride, and
that a gorgeous banquet had been arranged in honour of their arrival.
And the next day he rode across the wooden bridge with his wife, to
present her to the fair dame in the house by the river. The gay tulips
upon her brocade robe glittered in the distance, upon the fan in her
hand a coronet gleamed in diamonds, and the greyhound that had formerly
accompanied his master ran before her horse, not, as formerly, to hasten
to the window whence a fair hand had fed him with sugar and bits of
bread,--no, it ran along the river-bank to a spot where it barked and
whined piteously. There upon the water lay a snow-white garment, tossed
to and fro by the waves which could not float it down the stream, for
the long, fair braids of its owner were entangled among the roots under
the riverbank, and the pale, dead face was held fast, that the false
love might gaze once more into the wide, glazed eyes.
The window whence she had looked so confidently to see him once more
ride across the bridge was the same through which the doctor's
study-lamp threw its nightly beam. There she must have stood in her
bitter despair, watching the water hurrying past from the castle
resounding with the marriage revelry, and she had been mastered by a
fierce desire to plunge her fair body beneath the waves, that they might
bear her far, far away from the scene of her past happiness. And now
after long, long years the same struggle was going on in the same spot.
No, not the same struggle! Was he not a man, strong of soul? Even
should the unhappy woman, who had hidden all her misery in the grave by
one swift plunge, arise from the water and stretch out her white arms to
lure him in, he would not heed her. Kitty shuddered. Had not Henriette
said that whoever had once seen Flora love could understand that a man
would die sooner than resign her? And was there now any choice for him,
since she had told him that she hated him?
Kitty ran hastily back into the garden, as if the drowned woman with the
long, fair braids were actually arising by the dim shore to bar her way.
It was growing dark. The forest which had been the scene of the rude
attack of the afternoon looked like a black pall over the low hills, and
the ploughed meadow-land lay smooth and still, giving no token that
millions of living germs were there thrusting forth tiny arms beneath
the thin crust, ready to issue forth into the golden sunlight a waving
field of grain. Upon the roof the weathercock creaked in the moaning
evening wind, which was gradually increasing and would bring torrents of
spring rain during the night. The boughs of the silver poplars by the
fence tossed to and fro, and the loose branches in the half-finished
arbour cracked beneath its strong breath. Those branches were still
bare. When they were covered with leafy greenery, how would it be with
everything that lay at present unsolved in the dark lap of destiny?
Would the dean's widow ever sit there in the green retreat she so loved,
peaceful and happy as in the little parsonage garden of long ago?
Never, if her darling were unhappy or if she lost him.
Kitty timidly turned around the western end of the house. The softened
light of a night-lamp gleamed from the windows of the sick-room: the
struggle was not yet ended. The doctor stood by one of the windows, his
back turned to the young girl, his right hand raised as if imposing
silence. What had she just been saying,--that figure in the dim
background, not tall enough to allow more of her to be seen than the
defiant movement of the white lace fichu above the golden blonde curls
on the forehead? Had she again impertinently alluded to his profession?
Kitty shivered with nervous agitation, and in her indignation she half
resolved to interfere to recall the faithless woman to a sense of her
duty. Should she not enter at once, place herself by his side, and
confront her perjured sister with all the might of her maidenly scorn
and anger? What an idea! What would he say to such interference on the
part of a third person? Suppose he should look round at the intruder
with cool surprise, or thrust her aside as he had lately done by the
"determined" little blue flowers--shame and mortification would
annihilate her.
She walked hurriedly on, shivering with cold. Robust girl as she was,
clear in mind and sound in nerve, she was suddenly seized with a horror
of the solitude about her, of the pale light of the golden crescent hung
in the heavens, of the monotonous gurgling murmur of the rushing water.
Through the kitchen window she saw the dean's widow seated by the
shining kitchen lamp, engaged in some household occupation,--a peaceful
contrast to the scene in the sick-room. Quiet and soothing as the
picture was, in her present feverish state of mind and body she could
not join the tranquil old lady, whose clear glance would soon have
detected her agitation.
The house-door stood open, while the one leading into the kitchen was
closed. Kitty slipped on tip-toe through the dark hall and entered the
widow's sitting-room. Here she would try to become calmer, in this
darkening, tranquil spot, full of the fragrance of flowers and a
refreshing warmth. She seated herself in the arm-chair behind the
work-table. The laurels arched above her, the violets and hyacinths on
the window-sill sent forth a delicious odour, and the canary-bird, who
was just adjusting himself in the gloom for repose, hopped from perch to
perch, with an occasional shrill chirp: there was some life near her, if
only in the breast of a timid little bird. But she did not grow calmer.
Through these rooms the lovely forsaken woman had wandered in her
widow's weeds, and the smiling cherubs still ornamenting the ceiling had
looked down upon her outbreaks of anguish, her bitter despair. In vain
did Kitty try to banish the phantom, and the thought that perhaps Bruck,
too, might not survive the pain of separation. Had not Henriette said
so? she had seen his intense affection in the early days of his
betrothal; she must know how it would be.
The dean's widow entered with the lamp which she placed every evening
upon the doctor's study-table. She closed the windows, pulled down the
shades, saw that the fire in the stove burned clear, and then left the
room, without having perceived the young girl in her retreat. Her
gentle step died away as the door closed, but immediately afterward a
manly tread was heard in the hall, and the doctor came into the room.
He paused for a moment upon the threshold, and drew a long breath,
passing his hand across his brow; he was as unconscious as his aunt had
been of the presence, behind the leafy screen at the window, of a human
heart throbbing in mortal agitation. The girlish figure cowered,
breathless, closer to the window. Was this a miserable, despairing,
lonely man for evermore?
He hastily traversed this room and his own, and went to his study-table.
Kitty noiselessly arose. Standing in the middle of the room, she could
see him in his study where the light of the lamp clearly illumined his
face, which still showed traces of the passion that had so lately
mastered him. Cheek and brow were crimson, as if he had been walking far
and fast beneath a noonday sun. He had indeed travelled a weary road,
leading through ruined hopes and illusions destroyed! Had he reached
the end, the dreary goal where the lovely Fata Morgana melted away and
the terrible solitude of the future confronted him?
As he stood, he wrote a few lines upon a sheet of paper, which he then
put into an envelope. He did it hastily, in evident agitation. He
addressed it as hurriedly. Whose name did he write? Could he think of
aught in this hour save the terrible crisis through which he was
passing? The letter could be for no one but Flora. Was it a last
farewell, or the crushing denunciation of a dying man?
And now he poured water into the milk-white glass into which she had so
lately put her wild-flowers, and, opening a drawer in his table, took
from it a tiny vial. From this, carefully holding it against the light,
he dropped five clear drops into the glass of water.
The intense emotion which, gradually increasing, had hitherto seemed to
paralyze the young girl as she stood thus watching the wretched man, now
urged her to action. She suddenly stood by his side, and, placing one
hand upon his shoulder, with the other seized the glass he was conveying
to his lips, and slowly drew it away.
She could not utter a sound; but all the anguish, the compassionate
pity, that filled her soul shone in the brown eyes raised to his in a
mute entreaty more eloquent than words. She started back. Good heavens!
what had she done? She almost sank on the floor beneath the gaze of
astonished inquiry that she encountered. Stammering some inarticulate
words, she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
He understood it all in a moment. Placing the fatal glass upon the
table, he took both her hands in his and drew her towards him. "Kitty,
my dear child," he said, in tremulous tones, looking into the tearful
face which she tried to turn from him, as she shook her head. The girl,
usually so self-possessed and strong, looked at this moment what she
really was in years, in experience, and in unspotted purity; her
sensibilities, warm and unhackneyed, had led her on to what now left her
a prey to maidenly confusion.
She gently withdrew her hands, and hurriedly put her kerchief to her
eyes. "Ah, I have deeply offended you, Doctor Bruck!" she said, still
struggling with her tears. "You can never forget my folly. Good
heaven! how could I suppose that----" She bit her lip to keep from a
fresh outburst of weeping. "But do not judge me too harshly," she
added, tremulously. "What I have endured to-day might well have
confused a far stronger mind than mine."
He scarcely looked at her,--he only glanced at the tender, quivering
mouth, as if he did not wish to show how he was moved by her
self-accusation; but across his face there flitted the smile which she
knew so well.
"You have not offended me," he said, soothingly; "and how could I dare
to sit in judgment on your strength of mind? I do not know, I will not
attempt to discover, nor even to dispute, the estimate you must have
formed of my character, my mode of thought, my temperament, to lead you
to such a conclusion. The error has given me a moment of life which I
shall certainly never forget. And now calm yourself, or rather permit
me to exercise my office of physician." He took up the glass and
offered it to her. "I was not seeking in this glass the quiet that you
feared----" He stopped, and there was a moment's pause. "I had been
carried away, mastered by irritation, passion, and that, too, in a
sick-room. I could not forgive myself, did I not know that I, in common
with the rest of us, have nerves and blood that will not always yield
the mastership to my will. A few drops of this"--he pointed to the tiny
vial--"will soothe nervous agitation."
She took the glass from his hand and obediently drained its contents.
"And now let me entreat your forgiveness for the wretched hour you have
so lately passed. I am responsible for that miserable scene, for I
might have prevented it by a few words spoken at the right time." He
smiled, so bitterly, so sarcastically, that it went to the young girl's
soul. "Those few of my friends who, from pure goodness of heart, have
not quite dropped me, accuse me of a crushing quantity of beggarly
pride, because I am not fond of prating of myself. This 'beggarly
pride' has been a kind of Cassandra-curse to me. The world takes silence
for incapacity, for want of judgment, and so people see no necessity for
imposing moral constraint upon themselves in their dealings with me. I
see men professing to be talented and intellectual commit the clumsiest
blunders, and I can predict with mathematical precision their conduct
under certain circumstances--ah, it is too disgusting!" He lightly
stamped his foot upon the floor, and shook himself, as if to be rid of
some vile reptile.
He was far from self-possessed; the indignant blood was still in
commotion, and the frivolous creature whose wanton hand had so made
discord in this harmonious nature smiled down from the wall in white
Iphigenia robes, her hands calmly folded, her expression thoughtfully
spiritual, almost holy. Then she had prized and sought his affection,
his approval; then she had been determined to be the realization of his
ideal, the beneficent fairy of the home of the future illustrious
professor. She never could have fulfilled this determination: that home
would have been merely the soil in which her greed of admiration would
have flourished. He might have had a brilliant salon, but no home; an
ambitious woman of the world to do the honours of his house, but no
true, loving wife, no "sympathetic companion." He was no longer blind,
and yet he would not release her. Or was the link at length broken, now
that Flora had flung so boldly in his teeth her hatred of him? Kitty
did not know what had occurred after her departure; but, whatever it had
been, there was no longer any reason for her remaining here in his
study.
The doctor noticed the dark look she cast at the picture, and now saw
that she was preparing to leave the room.
"Yes, go," he said. "Henriette's maid has come, and is already
established for the night. The state of the invalid is now such as to
allow you to return to the villa easy in mind, to assist the Frau
President, according to her desire, at her tea-table this evening. I
give you my word that you need feel no anxiety. I will faithfully watch
over your sick sister," he repeated, as she tried to protest against
being sent away. "But give me your hand once more!" He held out his
own, and she quickly and willingly laid hers in it. "And now, whatever
may be said of me to you to-day, do not let it influence you to misjudge
me. In a day or two she"--he did not mention her name, but nodded, with
a bitter smile, towards Flora's picture--"will be of an entirely
different mind; it is this knowledge that makes me firm. I cannot lay
myself open to the reproach of having taken advantage of a--favourable
moment."
She looked up at him entirely mystified, and he nodded significantly
with a strange air of resignation, as if to say, "Yes, thus matters
stand," but neither of them spoke a word. "Good-night, good-night," he
said, immediately afterwards, and, with a light pressure, dropped her
hand and turned to his writing-table, while she left the room.
Involuntarily she looked round as she stood upon the threshold: he was,
oddly enough, raising the empty glass to his lips, but, as he did so, it
fell from his hand and was broken into a hundred fragments upon the
floor.
In the sick-room she found Flora ready for departure, looking as if
every fibre of her frame were thrilling with nervous excitement. "Where
have you been, Kitty?" she said, crossly. "Grandmamma is waiting for
us: it will be your fault if our tea is flavoured with reproaches."
Kitty did not reply. She threw over her shoulders the wrap which the
maid had brought her, and went to the bedside. Henriette was sleeping
quietly; the feverish colour was fading from her cheeks. The young girl
gently breathed kiss after kiss upon the small transparent hand that lay
relaxed upon the counterpane, and then followed her imperious sister.
In the hall a lamp was burning, and a footman from the villa stood
waiting. The doctor came from his study at this moment, and the blush
of shame returned to Kitty's cheek as she saw him hand to the man the
note she had supposed to contain a last farewell to his false love, and
which bore the address of a young physician in town.
Flora swept past him, as if unwilling to interrupt his instructions to
the servant, and vanished in the darkness. But Kitty went into the
kitchen to take leave of the widow. The old lady gravely shook her head
when she found that Flora had actually left the house without even
bidding her good-night, but she said nothing, and followed the doctor
into the sickroom to see the invalid once more before retiring to her
own apartment.
Flora waited just outside of the house until the servant's footsteps had
died away on the other side of the bridge. The light from the open
hall-door feebly illumined her angry face: it looked as if a curse were
hovering upon the parted lips. With an air of unspeakable contempt her
gaze rested upon the old house, marking the red tiled floor and bare
walls of the hall, and the entire exterior of the dwelling, as if to
make of the whole a complete picture in her mind.
"Oh, yes; greatly to my taste all this would have been,--a cottage with
the man of my choice!'" she said, with intense sarcasm, slowly nodding
her head: "a husband without position or influence! a dreary old barn
for a home in the midst of a lonely field! and an isolated existence for
the means of which my own limited income must suffice! I have never
known before what humiliation was. To-day, for the first time, in the
midst of those sordid surroundings, I felt dragged down, as it were,
from the pedestal where spotless descent, easy circumstances, and the
possession of intellectual force have placed me. God grant that
Henriette's illness may not terminate fatally! I could not bid her a
last farewell, for this house shall never again see me within its walls.
Never was woman more shamefully deluded than I have been; I could rage
against myself for having been so blindly and unsuspectingly lured into
such a snare."
She turned and hurried towards the bridge. The moonlight, gleaming like
a thin silvery veil upon the water, shed its pale rays upon her; the
wind, already rising, fluttered her dress and, tearing the shiny silken
covering from her head, tossed up the light ringlets in snaky curls
above her white brow.
"He does not release me, in spite of my prayers and struggles," she
said, pausing in the middle of the bridge, to her sister, who had
followed her, and now would have passed her without a word. "You were
there; you heard what was said. He is acting without honour, without
pity, like some usurer, who has failed to degrade his victim but yet
insists upon the fulfilment of the bargain made between them. Let him
content himself with the shadow of justice he boasts on his side. From
this moment I am free!"
With the last words, she drew the betrothal ring from her finger and
hurled it far into the rolling water.
"Flora, what have you done?" Kitty exclaimed, as she leaned over the
railing of the bridge and stretched out her hand as if to catch the ring
ere it fell. In vain: it had sunk beneath the stream. Would the waters
bear it away, or would it fall and lie buried near the house where
sorrow had come with the advent within its walls of faithful, loving
human souls? The young girl half expected to see the pale, dead woman
who had once found refuge beneath those waves arise from their
glittering depths to bring back the rejected symbol of fidelity. With a
shudder, she covered her eyes with her hand.
"You little fool, you look as if I had thrown myself in!" Flora said,
with a cold smile. "A woman with less force of character and will might
have done so perhaps. _I_ simply cast from me the last link of a
detested chain." She raised her hand, and seemed to caress the finger
whence the ring had been drawn. "It was but a slender circlet of gold,
simple as the man there"--she nodded towards the house--"would pretend
to be with his affectation of Spartan manners, and yet it weighed upon
me like iron. Let it lie buried and rust: I begin a new life."
Yes, she had thrown aside the burden,--thrown it aside "at all hazards,"
as she herself had said. The bugbear of a hated marriage vanished: the
sun of fame would rise in its stead.
Flora hurried on as if the ground were burning beneath her feet, and
Kitty silently followed her. In her young mind all was for the moment a
wild tempest of confusion and uncertainty; the sound, healthy judgment
she was wont to bring to bear upon men and things was obscured: she was
tossing, rudderless, between right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Did
not the beautiful creature beside her--the personification, as it were,
of glaring wrong, arrogance, and cruel self-will--conduct herself with
all the determination and complacent resolve of one to whom no other
course lay open? Was not Flora trampling beneath her feet her plighted
word, every consideration of truth and honour?
In the vestibule of the villa the servant informed the two sisters that
the Frau President had visitors: two old friends had come to tea.
"So much the better," Flora said to Kitty. "I am really not in the mood
to act Scheherazade for grandmamma to-night. Madame the general's wife
always has her pocket full of gossip and news from town; so I can be
spared."
She went in, as she said, to preside for half an hour at the tea-table,
and then she retired to her room with her "surcharged heart." But Kitty
excused herself on the plea of a headache. It seemed, indeed, as though
what she had passed through were bringing illness to both head and
heart.