By the afternoon of this day the sick-room in the doctor's house looked
precisely as it had done when the invalid had first been carried into it
forty-eight hours before. At her earnest entreaty, the doctor had
banished thence the elegant intruders from the villa. Outside, in the
wide hall, upon the rough tiled floor, stood ranged against the wall the
apple-green arm-chairs and the elegant screen, while about the simple
earthen vase containing the spring bouquet stood the gilt porcelain
toilet service. The stoneware was again advanced to honour, and the
old-fashioned cushioned chairs, with their black serge covers, were in
their former places. The little fountain shot up its tiny spray from a
circle of plants growing in earthen pots, and upon a table stood the
large cage in which were Henriette's canary-birds, brought hither by the
wish of the sick girl. The pretty little golden creatures fluttered in
and out, perfectly at home, flying around the bed, eating sugar from
their mistress's waxen hand, and swinging in the hanging-baskets of
vines suspended in the windows.
Nanni, the maid, had been sent to the villa to rest about noon, and the
dean's widow had taken upon her the charge of the invalid for the day.
The old lady was still in the brown silk dress, over which she had tied
a large white linen apron to deaden the rustle of the silk.
Henriette already knew of the change that had taken place. Her maid had
told her how a gentleman from court had been received in the hall by the
doctor's aunt and conducted by her into the doctor's study,--a gentleman
from the court with Bruck, who had so lately been only dispensary
physician! This, in addition to the festal attire of the dean's widow
and her joyful face, had excited Henriette's curiosity; she grew
restless, and never ceased asking and conjecturing until the doctor sat
down by her bedside and in his simple, quiet way informed her of what
had occurred. This he had done while Kitty, in Flora's room, was a
witness of the scene occasioned by the nearly simultaneous announcement
by Fraeulein von Berneck and the councillor of their startling news.
In the afternoon Kitty sat at Henriette's bedside. The doctor had been
summoned to an audience with the prince, and his aunt was absent to
arrange some household matters; the two sisters were alone for the first
time. Henriette's face fairly shone with the happiness she dared not
speak in words: rest and silence had been prescribed for her. The
doctor had strictly forbidden her to indulge again in the fervent
expressions of delight which she had terrified him by uttering when he
first told her all she asked to know. She obeyed him like a child, and
had asked of him or of his aunt no further question; but now when his
eye was no longer upon her, when the door had closed behind the careful
old lady, she suddenly raised herself up among the pillows, and asked,
in a hurried, eager whisper, "Where is Flora?"
"You know your grandmamma sends over every hour to tell you how she
longs to be here, but that the visits of sympathy she is obliged to
receive to-day have given her no chance to leave the villa."
"Oh, grandmamma!" the invalid repeated, peevishly, with an impatient
movement of her head. "I am not asking for _her_; I am speaking of
Flora." She clasped her hands and lifted them above her head. "Oh,
Kitty, what a brilliant justification of Bruck this is! Thank God, I
have lived to see it! If only he is not tempted to stop at the villa on
his way home from the palace! Flora must meet him again for the first
time here,--here by my bedside. I long to see her in the dust before
him!"
"Do not excite yourself, Henriette," Kitty entreated, in a trembling
voice.
"Oh, let me speak!" she rejoined, hurriedly. "If Bruck only knew how he
tortures me with his injunction of silence! My stifled emotion almost
chokes me. I feel as I did yesterday before I lost consciousness." She
propped herself on her elbow and buried her hand in the masses of fair
hair from which she had tossed away the muslin cap. "Do you remember
how contemptuously Flora alluded to this journey from which he has
returned so famous, calling it a 'pleasure-trip'?" she asked, looking up
at her sister, with eyes gleaming with scorn and anger, while her voice
fell into the same tone in which she had uttered the delirious fancies
of the previous day, which had been the cause of such a terrible
struggle. Kitty shuddered. "Do you remember how she sneered and laughed
when Moritz came so near the truth in surmising that the doctor had been
called to some patient in L----g? No: although she should entreat his
pardon on her knees, she can hardly atone for such wicked folly, such
unexampled arrogance. I should like to have one look now into the
depths of her soul. Such a crushing mortification! She will scarcely
be able to lift her eyes to him or to us when she first sees him."
Kitty had folded her hands in her lap, and her eyelashes drooped above
her cheeks as if she were the guilty one. Her poor, passionately-moved
sister had no idea that this first meeting never would take place, that
Flora's foot would never more enter the "dreary barn." Neither she nor
the rest knew that the false love had freed herself by a violent effort,
that the symbol of the tie that had bound her--the "simple" golden
circlet--lay in the depths of the river beneath the bridge, if the waves
had not borne it far away.
"Do say something, Kitty," Henriette complained. "You must be
cold-blooded indeed to be so calm in the midst of all this. It is true,
you have had no chance to become intimately acquainted with the
circumstances, and consequently you may not be able to view matters from
a correct point of view. Bruck, for example, can scarcely interest
you,--you see him too seldom, and have certainly not spoken ten words to
him; but you have been a witness of Flora's detestable manoeuvres; you
have heard the most heartless expressions from her lips. I should
suppose that the sense of justice inherent in every healthy nature might
inspire you with a desire, a thirst, to see the offender punished."
Kitty looked up with a strange gleam in her eyes. Certainly the blood
was not cold that suddenly dyed crimson her forehead and checks, and
even the round, snowy throat: it was so stirred that for one moment she
forgot that she was sitting by an invalid's bedside, and that it was her
duty as a conscientious nurse not to allow even the mention of any
exciting subject. "And what then?" she asked, eagerly. "What if Flora
should acknowledge with shame how wrong she has been? Could it really
matter much to a man so insulted, so outraged? As you yourself say,
Flora has openly testified her dislike of him. If he were made a
prince, it could not transform this dislike to affection."
"Yes, it would do so instantly in a nature as vain and ambitious as
Flora's," Henriette replied, in a tone of bitter scorn. "And Bruck?
You will see how at her first advance he will ignore the past as if it
had never been." She leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment.
"Yes, yes; love is such a profound mystery!" she continued, in a
half-whisper, to herself. "And he loves her still; how else explain his
patient submission and long-suffering?" She opened her eyes, and there
shone in their unearthly brilliancy a mixture of pain and irony. "Even
although a demon looked at him from her eyes, and she should strike him
with her hands, he would love her still, and kiss the hand raised
against him." There was a heart-breaking smile upon the emaciated face,
which she turned and buried in the pillow. After a short pause, she
said, with firmness, "The change in her will make him happy, and
therefore we, on our part, must do all we can to obliterate the memory
of these last few miserable months."
Kitty said not a word. The sick girl was awaiting with intense
impatience the moment that should see the man whom she idolized as her
physician happy once more. How if Flora did not come,--if Henriette
should learn at last that the false love had put an end, with her own
hand, to what she said had been a long torture to her? "Then you will
never mention our names again," Henriette had wailed to Bruck in her
delirium of the previous day. The chaos of yesterday still reigned in
Kitty's mind. Her conception of moral law was distinct and clear; she
was still inexperienced enough to believe that rewards and punishments
are just consequences of individual action; and here, in this strangely
perverted world, she found it was eagerly desired that falsehood,
treachery, and a systematic denial of duty should not only go
unpunished, but should even be rewarded by rare good fortune. All pains
were taken to breathe no syllable of the wrong done; the criminal must
be petted, and thanked most humbly for a conversion which, if it really
should occur, would not be the result of repentance, but the effect of a
change of outward circumstances. And he whom she had so trampled
beneath her feet,--would he take her instantly to his heart again if she
condescended to return? Of course; he had never released her, even when
she told him that she hated him, And Kitty glowed with indignation at
the thought of the pitiable weakness which could induce a man to play so
unmanly a part. She would have liked to drown in a passion of tears
this knowledge which for a moment darkened all life, even the glorious
sunny world of nature; but she suppressed all expression of the strange,
sharp pain, and sat still, apparently more "cold-blooded" than ever.
Weep? What was the whole miserable story to her? She had nothing to do
with it, and nothing further to think about it, except with regard to
some wedding-present for her sister, some costly piece of embroidery,
which she must begin immediately if the marriage were to take place at
Whitsuntide.
The dean's widow came in to lay a branch of budding syringa upon the
invalid's coverlet as a greeting from the golden spring that was
flinging abroad all sweet odours and the songs of birds upon its
health-giving breezes. She insisted upon resuming her place by the bed,
declaring that Kitty was not needed there at present, but must go out
into the garden and breathe the fresh, sunny air; she surely needed it,
for her face still showed traces of yesterday's agitation.
The young girl left the room. Yes, air and sunshine had always proved
her good friends, bringing the delicious consciousness of youthful
vigour, clearing her moral perceptions, and dispelling all morbid
sensations. And the dean's widow was right: the world was all May, the
promise of the year was everywhere, and the mild air saturated with
sunshine breathed health into mind and body. Kitty went out of the
house-door and stood upon the steps, inhaling the fresh breeze as she
involuntarily extended her round, firmly-moulded arms. Then, descending
into the garden, she looked beyond the low picket-fence into the blue
distance, beyond the meadows, beyond the river rolling through them,
beyond the cottage-roofs and the church-spire. Oh, mysterious human
heart, that in presence of all this glory was still so sad and cast
down!
From the low wood-shed at the bottom of the garden came a constant,
melodious twitter, and from beneath the eaves darted small, feathered
creatures, their backs shining with a steely lustre, their throats rusty
brown. The first swallows had come. Those eaves had been their nest for
years. How often, as a child, had Kitty, lying in the grass, watched
their outcomings and ingoings! but then their chatter had sounded lonely
and sad in her ears, accompanied by the monotonous murmur of the water,
the only other sound that broke the desolate silence reigning about the
deserted house, unless upon autumn days, when the ripe fruit would now
and then fall with a soft thud upon the sod. Now spoiled petted birds
were trilling their songs from the open windows; the smoke from the
chimney soared aloft, and spread a thin, sun-gilded veil above the
meadow; beside the shed stood the kennel, and the cross, bristly
house-dog tore at his chain and snapped at a pretty little light-brown
hen that boldly ventured near him to get a few scattered grains of
wheat. The housemaid had brought from her village house a cock and some
hens, at the widow's request. Yes, everything must revive the memory of
the country parsonage of long ago.
Kitty chased the cackling hen away from the cross, growling dog, and
wandered slowly about beneath the fruit-trees The dry, dead grass of the
old year was here and there dashed with that blue which calls up a gleam
of pleasure into the saddest eyes: the first violets were blossoming,
and the tall, shapely girl bent as eagerly to pluck them as had the
little "miller's mouse" years ago. How strange it seemed to her that
only a few weeks before, as her grandfather's heiress, she had been
mistress here! The sum which the doctor had paid for this little
homestead belonged to her,--the honest, careful savings thrown in with
the hoarded wealth of the grasping corn-dealer. She started, and
involuntarily dropped the violets she had plucked. The same keen
sensation of disgrace and humiliation which she had experienced
yesterday in the midst of those furious women again assailed her. At
the first shock she had protested against the terrible accusation; but
now, whenever she called up in her memory her grandfather's coarse, hard
face, she could not but admit to herself that he might have said the
cruel words about the "starving mice," and in positive pain she clenched
her hands. She knew well that on her mother's side she was sprung from
the lowest class of society; she had never dreamed of wishing it
otherwise,--she had rather gratefully acknowledged the splendid gift of
perfect health and vigour bequeathed to her by her grandmother, whose
stalwart arm had wielded the axe in the bracing woodland air; but the
coarseness and brutality with which the former mill-servant had treated
the poor in his pursuit of wealth disgusted and sickened her, and she
could not bear to think of the iron safe with its hoarded treasures.
Without knowing it, her walk towards the river quickened almost to a
run. Just where the hawthorn hedge bounding the little garden ran for a
short distance along the river-bank, glittered some scattered splinters
of white glass, the fragments of the little vessel from which she had on
the previous evening drunk the soothing mixture. The maid had
carelessly thrown them where the water might perhaps carry them away. A
sharp pang shot through Kitty's heart, and tears rushed to her eyes, as
she thought of that scene in the doctor's house. How far she had been
carried by her impulsiveness! Although the refined, reserved man had
instantly spoken soothing words of excuse for her rashness, he must
inwardly have smiled in scorn of the strong, healthy girl whose brain
could be so filled with sickly sentimental fancies. Never again would
she be so misled by her weakly sympathetic nature! No; she would rather
pass for cruel, hard,--yes, even shrewish. And the doctor should never
have cause to laugh at her again,--ah, he would soon have no opportunity
to do so. In a little while Henriette would be removed to the villa;
all connection between it and the house by the river would be at an end;
the doctor would not even mention the names of the inmates of Villa
Baumgarten. After what had occurred yesterday evening,--that scene of
which she had been the sole witness,--Flora's return was impossible,
however firmly Doctor Bruck might insist upon his rights; this very day
must convince him. All must be at an end between himself and Flora, if
she kept away. Or would he fulfil Henriette's fears?--would he be
unable to repress the desire, upon his return from the interview with
the prince, to tell Flora himself of the change in his affairs? If he
did stop at the villa, the diamonds upon the finger where he had placed
he betrothal ring would tell him instantly, and far more plainly than in
words, what he had to expect.
Suddenly Kitty ran back from the river-bank to the garden; a terrible
noise, that might possibly disturb Henriette, was heard from the
direction of the wood-shed: the chickens were flying screaming and
cackling in all directions, and the dog, with loosened chain dragging
after him, was making straight for the unfortunate yellow hen that had
previously aroused his ire. Kitty ran to the rescue; she seized him by
the collar just as he had torn a mouthful of feathers out of the tail of
his unhappy victim.
She laughed like a child at the rumpled hen running with a querulous
cackle into the wood-shed, and dragged the dog back to his kennel. The
unruly beast tugged and resisted, snapping at the strong, girlish hand
that was firmly leading him back to captivity.
This struggle for mastery might well have looked dangerous to a
spectator, for the dog was vicious, savage, and large, of a strong,
muscular build, and the tawny stripes on his back and sides gave him a
tiger-like appearance; but he struggled and writhed in vain. With her
left hand Kitty fastened the chain again into the iron ring in the side
of the kennel, and then, suddenly releasing the animal, gave a backward
spring; the brute rushed after her, but only succeeded in tearing off a
piece of the hem of her dress.
"You villain!" she said, shaking her finger at him, and then picking up
her skirt to examine the injury it had sustained. She heard hasty steps
approaching from the bridge, and knew that it was the doctor returning
from town, but she did not look up. She hoped he would go into the
house without observing her. Perhaps he was coming from the villa in
most melancholy mood. He had been so quiet and silent to-day, it almost
seemed to her that with the gentle, lingering "Good-night! good-night!"
of the previous evening he had meant to mark a boundary between his
former and his present life.
He did not go into the house, however, but came directly towards Kitty,
raising his cane at the growling, barking dog, who, thus threatened,
became silent, and lay down at the door of his kennel. The doctor took
a stone and hammered the link of the chain farther upon the hook. "I
shall have to get rid of this brute: he is too savage and unmanageable,"
he said, as he threw away the stone. "His capacity as a watch-dog is
not worth the terror he occasions. You, it is true, seemed to have
small fear of him; I am afraid that in your consciousness of strength
you might be easily led into rashness." This he said in a grave, almost
reproachful tone; he had probably been a witness of the scene that had
just occurred as he approached on the opposite side of the river.
She laughed. "Indeed you are wrong! I have as much capacity of terror
as other girls," she replied, bravely. "Strange dogs, in particular,
are my aversion, and I get out of their way whenever I can. But in
critical situations there is no help for it; one must not give way to
weakness; so I shut my teeth tight and take hold, and I suppose it looks
very brave."
The doctor was following with his eyes a swallow flying away from the
wood-shed, and he too now smiled, but without looking at Kitty. To her
this smile seemed one of incredulity; he probably thought her boasting
of her heroism, and unfemininely proud of her strength,--when nothing
could be more foreign to her taste or to the truth.
"You doubt it?" she asked, with a glance that was only half merry. "Let
me tell you that not until very lately did the heroine before you learn
to rise superior to the dread of ghosts in the dark." An arch smile
played about her lips and deepened the dimples in her cheeks. "You must
know that the castle mill swarms with gnomes and fairies; its princely
founder sometimes sees fit to descend from his worm-eaten frame to
inspect the bags of grain himself; and there are not wanting the ghosts
of dishonest millers who gave short measure during their lives. You may
be sure that Susie never kept one such incontestable fact from my
youthful ears; and I believed them all as firmly as if I had been
brought up in a Thuringian spinning-room. Not a word of this 'fearful
joy' could I utter to my father or my dear Lukas,--Susie would have been
scolded, and I should have been ashamed; so I resigned myself to go when
it was required of me from garret to cellar in black darkness, and to
conquer my fears, although my teeth chattered as if from an ague-fit."
"Then you were early accustomed to make heavy drafts upon your power of
self-control. How, then, did it happen that you were so ready to
ascribe to a man an act of cowardice and weakness?"
She crimsoned. "You forgave me that yesterday," she said, evidently
hurt, and yet not without self-assertion, as she stroked a stray lock of
hair from her brow in hopes of thus concealing her blushes.
He shook his head. "You should not use that expression, after my
assurance that you had done nothing to displease me," he rejoined,
involuntarily lowering his voice, as if touching upon some matter known
only to her and himself, the knowledge of which the rest of the world
was not to share. "I only meant to say that I cannot imagine from what
source your yesterday's conjecture sprang."
Kitty glanced towards the house; once more she looked rosy, lovely, and
fresh as an apple-blossom; her head, with its crown of braids, seemed
almost too young for her Juno-like figure. She pointed to the window of
the corner room. "In old times a noble lady lived there----"
"Ah, the romantic story told, too, in many a peasant's spinning-room!"
he interrupted her. "Then it was the tragical end of that forsaken
dame----"
"Not that only. Henriette made me very anxious and unhappy----"
"Henriette is ill. The morbid state of her nerves makes thought and
sensation unnatural in her case. But you are healthy in body and mind."
"Yes, that is true; but there are certain things for which youth and
ignorance have no scale of measurement, upon which their judgment cannot
be brought to bear----"
"Love, for example," he hastily interposed, with a rapid glance towards
the girl.
"Yes," she assented, simply.
He bowed his head, and, lost in thought, tapped mechanically with his
cane a large block of sandstone lying in the middle of a grass-plot
opposite the house. In former years it had served as a curious but most
delightful table for little Kitty, who had thought it placed there
chiefly that there might be a spot where childish hands could deposit
fallen fruit, flowers, and collections of pebbles. Now she knew that it
had once been the base of a statue; the remains of a delicate little
naked foot were still to be seen upon its mossy surface.
Kitty passed her slender hand caressingly over the relic. "Some nymph or
muse once stood here," she said. "The airy form stood lightly poised
upon one foot, with extended arms. I can imagine the whole figure from
this fragment. Perhaps her lovely face was turned towards the bridge,
and she saw the horseman cross it with his haughty bride in her gleaming
brocade----" Involuntarily she paused; his thoughts were evidently far
away,--he did not hear what she was saying. What occupied him must have
been sad indeed, for for the first time, she saw a look of unmistakable
distress on his fine face, usually so composed and calm. Flora! She was
this man's curse; his passion for her would be his ruin.
The young girl's sudden silence made him look around. "Ah, yes," he
said, evidently recalling his thoughts; "the worthy people who lived
here for so long took the liberty of destroying the statues. The garden
must once have been adorned with these figures: there are several
pedestals still standing in the shrubbery. I shall try to restore the
place to what it was formerly. In spite of the neglect of years, the
original plan of the garden can still be traced."
"Then it will be all very fine and grand here; but the view of all this
lovely wild greenery will be lost; your study----"
"My study will be occupied after next October by a dear friend of my
aunt's," he calmly interrupted her. "In the autumn I shall remove to
L----."
She gazed at him in amazement, and involuntarily clasped her hands. "To
L----?" she repeated. "Good heavens! are you going to leave her? What
does she say to it?"
"Flora? Of course she will go with me," he said, coldly, but his eyes
gleamed as with an angry pain. "Do you suppose I shall leave your
sister here? Be easy on that score."
Kitty had alluded to his aunt, but she could not correct the mistake:
his reply had so startled her, he spoke with such certainty. "You come
from the villa?" she asked, timidly, but eagerly.
"No, I have not been to the villa," he said, with emphasis. It sounded
almost as if he who never condescended to a sneer were indulging in
sarcasm. "I have, indeed, not been so fortunate to-day as to see any
one from there. I should have liked to see Moritz; but his guests, who
were just leaving him as I passed there, were so noisily gay that I
preferred to go by without speaking to him."
He had not, then, spoken with Flora since the evening before, and yet
was so decided. What could it mean? Kitty wished she were away from it
all; she seemed to herself like no one but Priam's ill-omened daughter,
the only one who saw where all were blind. It was fortunate that at
this moment the poor hen once more ventured too near her grim enemy: it
gave Kitty a pretext for breaking off the conversation; she chased the
fowl into the shed, closed the door and bolted it.