The dean's widow left the room, to provide some refreshment, and Kitty
followed her. Disgust and aversion drove her from the room in which
such a farce had just been played. She begged the old lady to resign to
her for an hour her household cares, and the widow willingly handed her
her keys. "Here, my dear, dear child, my faithful, true-hearted Kitty,"
she said, gently, in a voice which trembled as if she were suppressing a
sigh, and then she put her arm around the girl's waist and drew her
towards her. "It rests me only to look into your frank, sweet face. I
am always reminded of Luther's beloved Catharina, the true wife standing
so firmly and boldly by her husband's side." And then she sighed deeply
as she released the blushing girl and returned to the sick-room.
Kitty brought from the store-room the coffee, and a cake baked in honour
of the day, and, while the stout, good-humoured maid made the fire in
the stove, she filled the pretty old-fashioned bowl with sugar, and was
just cutting the cake in slices, when she heard some one leave the
sick-room. The kitchen-door was ajar, and through the wide opening she
saw Flora come into the hall.
The beautiful woman looked around her with a troubled, uncertain
air,--the geography of the "dreary barn" was unknown to her,--but it
seemed as if those searching eyes had magnetically attracted the doctor.
At that moment he came out of his aunt's sitting-room.
Flora flew towards him with open arms. Her long black robe swept the
floor, and the ends of her black lace scarf streamed behind her like
loosened tresses of dark hair. With her white hands, which the black
lace ruffles made to seem childishly small, and her pale face, she
looked like one of those fair, ghostly dames who, according to popular
superstition, arise from the grave to murder those whom they attract.
"Leo!" It was gently breathed, and yet it vibrated through the hall.
Kitty listened with bated breath,--it pierced her very soul.
Was that Flora's voice? Did that delicious sound of soft entreaty, of
trembling longing, really issue from the lips that could utter such
stinging words, that could smile in such cutting scorn? The young girl
turned away, and cast down her eyes; the knife trembled in her hand.
She longed to shut the door, that she might neither see nor be seen, but
strangely enough she lacked the force and courage to stir. There was no
answer without, and no further step was heard.
"Leo, look at me!" Flora spoke louder, half in entreaty, half in
command. "Why torture yourself by thus doing violence to your own
heart? I know how manfully you are struggling to suppress your most
sacred impulses, that you may seem hard and cold, to punish me. And
why? Because yesterday I was half wild with what I had suffered, and
did not know what I did or said. Leo, my life which belongs to you had
been in danger, my blood was in a ferment, and--then you irritated me
further."
Kitty involuntarily looked up. Beside her stood the maid, with a broad
grin on her good, fat face: it certainly was delightful to hear the
pretty lady begging something of her young master. Kitty instantly
recovered her self-control; she took the plate of cake in her hand and
went out into the hall. She saw the doctor standing with folded arms
and averted face gazing through the open house-door; his brown cheek
looked pale, his teeth were firmly and angrily set, while Flora's
trailing black figure hung upon his neck, clinging to him like the
fabled vampire.
At the noise made by the opening door, the doctor started, and his
glance encountered Kitty's. He recoiled as if detected in some crime.
Flora's eyes followed the direction of his own, but the lovely arms were
not unclasped from about his neck. "It is only Kitty," she murmured, and
leaned her head upon his breast.
Kitty glided past them into the sick-room. Her heart beat almost
audibly with terror and shame: she had interrupted a love-scene a la
Romeo and Juliet. With trembling hands she placed the plate upon a
table, and by Henriette's desire, who feared that her pets might make an
inroad upon the cake and sugar, she lured the fluttering canaries into
their small aviary and closed its door behind them.
As she did so, she saw the ring that had eluded their search lying upon
the clean white sand on the floor of the cage. Oddly enough, it had
dropped through the wires and upon the soft sand without noise. Kitty
took it up and slipped it into her pocket, and then she should have gone
into the kitchen to superintend the making of the coffee, but she almost
shivered with terror and dislike. She seemed to herself about to be
thrust forth to death, to destruction. She still stood by the table,
busying herself with the birds, while the Frau President, in a pleasant,
subdued voice, talked on about Flora's trousseau, and the dean's widow
reckoned up upon her fingers the various additional articles that the
change of residence would make necessary; the old lady seemed quite
convinced that her distinguished nephew was about to marry a kind of
princess.
Kitty was released from torment sooner than she had anticipated. The
doctor entered the room after a few minutes, and she slipped past him
without looking up. The hall was empty. Flora must have gone into the
garden. The grinding of the coffee-mill was heard in the kitchen;
perhaps that harsh noise, and not, as she had suspected, her appearance,
had terminated the reconciliation scene thus quickly.
Her duties were soon concluded, and, while the maid was putting on a
clean apron preparatory to carrying the coffee to the guests, Kitty went
to the window and examined the ring, which with a throbbing heart she
took from her pocket. E.M., 1843, was engraved on the inside,--Ernst
Mangold. Then she held in her hand the betrothal-ring of Flora's mother.
She stood paralyzed by the utter frivolity with which Flora had thus
discovered a means of relieving herself from all embarrassment. Hers
was one of those feminine natures which master a situation by a bold
stroke as soon as it is comprehended, and by a reckless ignoring of all
that is unpleasant in the past come down upon their feet in any change
of circumstances and instantly take up afresh the threads of their
intrigues and continue to weave them successfully. And this was the
sister before whose intellectual and moral superiority her childish soul
had prostrated itself in timid awe!
The unpretending symbol of conjugal fidelity worn by Flora's gentle
mother to the hour of her death had been desecrated by the daughter's
wanton hands. It seemed almost to burn Kitty's fingers. She would have
liked to throw it far away, never to be found again by human hand; but
it was her sister's by inheritance, and must be returned to her.
She left, the kitchen and went into the garden, at the bottom of which
Flora stood gazing abroad over the picket-fence. Her back was turned to
the house, and her arms folded across her breast, while the sunlight
tinged her fair hair through the meshes of the lace with pale gold. The
watch-dog was barking incessantly and angrily at the mute, strange
figure, with the long, rustling train lying dark upon the grass.
The dog's barking drowned the noise of Kitty's approaching footsteps;
Flora did not observe her until she stood close beside her. Then she
started and turned round, her face still flushed with agitation; she was
evidently in a very irritable frame of mind, for she frowned still more
darkly, and her eyes flashed with anger.
"Are you here again, like an inevitable Deus ex machina? Awkward
creature, to come blundering in!" she exclaimed, as if there stood
beside her not this stately, dignified young girl, but an ill-bred,
naughty child, whom the discipline of the rod awaited.
Righteous indignation almost overpowered Kitty; hers was no submissive
nature; her youthful blood did not flow so gently in her veins as to
prompt her to turn the other cheek to so insulting a reception: but she
controlled herself. "I bring you your ring," she said, briefly and
coldly.
"Give it to me!" Flora's features assumed a more tranquil expression,
as she hastily took the little circlet from Kitty's open palm and put it
on her finger. "I am very glad to have the truant once more. It is
such bad luck----"
"You are not alluding to any evil omen in this case?" The young girl's
voice almost failed her at the display of such incredible audacity.
"And why not? Do you suppose people of our position in life are
necessarily free from superstition? Napoleon the First was as
superstitious as any village crone, let me tell you; and I, child, also
confess to a faith in omens." She looked fixedly at Kitty, as if to
defy criticism and to bar all allusion to the past, nay, even all memory
of the display on the part of her youthful sister.
But there confronted her now a being undeviatingly true, whose indignant
blood was boiling. "You forget," Kitty said, "that you were not
standing alone there last evening." And she pointed to the bridge.
Flora laughed angrily. "This comes of having one's footsteps dogged by
a younger sister. In the true school-girl fashion, she puts on an air
of confidential familiarity, and delights in hinting at what were best
gone and forgotten. Did you not hear me say just now that the adventure
of yesterday in the forest so shattered my nerves that I could not be
responsible for anything that occurred afterwards? I suppose, my
esteemed Kitty, that, in your profound sagacity, you would remind me
that I cannot connect any omen with my betrothal-ring because--well,
because it lies at the bottom of the river. Eh, my dear?" Again she
laughed. "What if, in spite of my agitation and confusion of mind, my
indignation at an unjust and prejudiced criticism that had just been
launched at me, I had yielded to a feeling of compunction, and had not
thrown away my precious jewel? Did you hear the ring drop, child?
Certainly not! for here it is," and she turned the ring about on her
finger, "after having really been upon the point of leaving me of its
own accord----"
"Because it is too large for you. Your fingers are more slender than
your mother's were," Kitty sternly interrupted her.
Flora raised her hand in menace. "Viper!" she muttered, between her
teeth. "In the first moment that I saw you I felt, I knew, that your
clumsy person would cast an ugly shadow upon my life! How dare you
undertake to play the spy upon me? Upon me? These honourable
principles are the fine effects of the teachings of your excellent
Lukas!"
"No need to mention my Lukas!" said Kitty, who opposed a perfectly calm
demeanour to this passionate outburst. "My education has had nothing to
do with my mode of thought and action in this instance. These
'honourable principles' I inherit from a good father. I detest deceit,
and would rather die than call falsehood truth. You may be able to
silence those about you by your treacherous audacity, and thus make them
accomplices in your deceit, but this you cannot do with me, young and
inexperienced though I be. I am not to be blinded: I have excellent eyes
and a good memory----"
"Very sound natural endowments; hardly to be equalled by any one gifted
with delicate sensibilities and refined feeling!" Flora exclaimed.
While Kitty was speaking, she had several times turned as if to leave
"the chit." She had clenched her hands, bitten her lip, and mercilessly
stripped of its first green leaves one of the boughs of a bush that
stood near, but she had not gone, and now she spoke as composedly as
though she had not for a moment lost her self-possession.
"Will you ever understand me, child?" She shrugged her shoulders. "I
think not; you cling with childlike credulity to your tiresome code of
what you call morality, and can never appreciate the soul of things,
estimating everything by your rule, as the tradesman does his stuffs by
the yard, be they coarse or fine, green or red; but I will try to make
myself clear."
She approached her sister, so closely that Kitty felt her breath upon
her cheek. "Yes, you are right," she said, in a low tone, and with a
hasty side-glance towards the window of the house, "my betrothal-ring is
lying in the depths of the river. I flung it away in a paroxysm of
despair, in utter disgust,--disgust at the prospect of a life of poverty
at Bruck's side. Girls of your stamp cannot, of course, understand
this. You choose a husband for certain qualities, a good figure,
perhaps, or a fine beard, and when once you have said 'yes' you follow
him through thick and thin; and rightly,--such girls make excellent
mothers of well-taught sons. They cower in the domestic nest and timidly
and humbly close their eyes when an eagle soars to dizzy heights above
them. But such an eagle must be my mate. Upon those heights I breathe
my native air; close by his side, I cheer him onward and encourage his
lofty flight----"
"And if some malignant arrow lame his wing, you proclaim him a crow and
leave him like a coward," Kitty interrupted her, thus trenchantly
stigmatizing her ambitious sister's shameless treachery; and, as she
spoke, she stood with folded arms, the personification of indignant
womanhood. "You did not even have the grace to go quietly to work about
your faithless schemes, as is the wont of traitors, but you openly
declared your bitter hatred, and proclaimed yourself deceived, betrayed,
on this very spot, where now you stand again----"
"Bruck's idolized love, who needed to pass through all her errors to
appreciate the magnitude of her good fortune," Flora completed the
sentence, in a tone of triumph. Then, with a malicious gleam in her
eyes, she added, "But you can be excessively impertinent, child. I am
really struck by the fine turn you gave to my simile. I admit that a
fair share of quite respectable intelligence has fallen to you,--just
enough, indeed, to mislead you entirely in your estimate of genius, of a
soul of fire. What can you know of a psychological problem? If I had
uttered yesterday one word of friendship forfeited, you would be right
in your indignation at my sudden change, for nothing of passion can come
of friendship; while hate and love are close akin in the human
soul,--they enkindle each other; excess of love often lies at the
foundation of what seems bitter hatred. You, with your blunt
sensibilities, can never understand this. You would propitiate your
husband by some triumph of cookery, while a nature like mine, in the
intensity of its desire to atone, might commit a crime for him, nay,
even suffer death."
She pressed her clenched fist to her breast, as if she were even then
thrusting a dagger into her heart. "And now let me tell you, never have
I loved Bruck so passionately, so intensely, as since I have known how
he has endured like a martyr, like a hero, in silence,--since I
confessed to myself how bitterly I have wronged him; and never,"--she
suddenly seized Kitty's hand in a clasp that was as cold as the wind
which came blowing from the water,--"and never," she whispered, "have I
been so fiercely jealous. Heed what I say, child! This is _my_ domain.
And although you are the last to be held dangerous by me,--he has no
liking for you, as I have long observed, and, besides, will never have
eye or ear for any other save myself,--still, I am not disposed to
endure the presence near me of any one who so evidently seeks to please.
Your 'homely' ways and conduct here, your intimate going and coming, do
not suit me. For the future all this must cease. Do you understand,
child?"
Having thus spoken, she picked up her train and turned hastily towards
the house, as if to bar all reply,--a needless precaution, for Kitty's
pale lips were firmly closed. Youth and innocence had no reply for such
a heaped-up measure of arrogance, waywardness, and deceit.