"You will have hard work, Moritz," said Flora, pointing towards the door
through which the Frau President had vanished. "Grandmamma is evidently
on her mettle and armed to the teeth."
The councillor laughed gaily.
"Well, well," Flora continued, "you will see whether she will yield one
inch of the authority you have allowed her to exert so absolutely. I
have warned you repeatedly; now see----" She suddenly interrupted
herself, and anxiously seized Bruck's hand. "For heaven's sake, tell
me, Leo, what is the matter with you?" she cried, passionately. "You
are struggling with some grief which you would conceal from me. Ah, you
cannot deceive me! Here, and here"--she passed her white fingers across
his forehead, that flushed to the roots of his hair--"I see lines that
distress me. You are working too hard. After to-day, I shall take the
liberty of sending one of the servants every day to your house in town
to deny you positively to that tiresome crowd, who, after defaming you
in every possible way, are killing you with their importunity."
Henriette stared at the speaker like one dismayed, and the councillor
cleared his throat and stroked his delicate moustache to conceal a
slight sneer, while the doctor, whose face had hitherto maintained a
rigid composure, smiled a faint smile of bitter contempt. "That you
will certainly not do, Flora," he said, in a peremptory tone. "I must
decidedly forbid any interference with my practice, either at present or
in future. Just now," and he turned to the councillor, "I have a word
to say to you on behalf of a very sick man, quite broken down physically
and mentally by violent business excitement; will you let me speak with
you alone?"
"A very sick man?" the councillor repeated, dubiously. He knitted his
brows, and the lines about his mouth grew hard and pitiless. "Oh, yes;
I know whom you mean,--that hair-brained fellow Lenz. The man has been
speculating in the wildest way, and wants me to save him from ruin. No,
I thank you."
"Will you not wait until we are alone to discuss it?" the doctor asked,
with emphasis. "At present you and I are the poor man's only confidants
with regard to his terrible situation; even his wife does not know of
it----"
"Well, well, I will hear how far you are able to plead for him, but I
hardly think I can hold out even a finger to save him. It is a hopeless
affair, I tell you." He shrugged his shoulders. The sudden
accumulation of wealth was fast making the really kind-hearted man hard
and cruel; he found it quite impossible to sympathize with a
fellow-mortal beset by torturing cares. "You, of all men, should be the
last to say a word for him,--he was one of the most violent of your
accusers."
"Ought that really to influence me?" Bruck asked, gravely, as he
prepared to accompany the councillor into an adjoining room. The man of
science looked at this moment immeasurably the superior of the mere
moneyed man beside him.
The three sisters were left alone. Flora rang for her maid to take away
the councillor's gifts, and Kitty took up her parasol.
"Are you going out, Kitty?" asked Henriette, who was again seated in her
rocking-chair.
"To-day is a class-day at the Frau Dean's; I am late, and must
hurry----" The young girl paused involuntarily,--Flora's face had grown
so dark and angry.
"I cannot express how your conduct disgusts me," Flora said, peevishly.
"The dean's widow, personification that she is of duty, stern duty,
declined my invitation to coffee to-day because those wretched little
things from the lowest quarter of the town could not on any account be
sent away without their instruction; and Kitty sets off to second her
efforts, with an air of the most righteous devotion to the welfare of
humanity."
She bit her lips, and waited until the maid had left the room, when she
turned and laid a detaining hand on Kitty's arm. "Patience for a moment!
Let me tell you that your conduct forces me to play a part insufferably
wearisome to me. September is still far off. Of course the dean's widow
expects her nephew's betrothed to exercise the same heroic
self-sacrifice practised by her model sister. I am to take those
children's dirty fingers in mine and patiently initiate them stitch by
stitch into the mysteries of knitting and netting. I am to wash their
faces, comb their hair, and play games with the little wretches by the
hour. I have tried it; ugh! And if I fail to do it, his aunt's
complaints stamp me in Bruck's eyes as a kind of monster, an unwomanly,
heartless creature, who does not love children. For this reason, in
view of my rights in the matter, I forbid now and in future this kind of
intercourse on your part in the house of my future husband. Do you
hear?"
"I hear, but I shall nevertheless continue to follow the dictates of my
own conscience," Kitty replied, calmly, freeing her arm from her
sister's grasp. "Your rights which you once scorned, and in my presence
declared yourself weary of----"
"Yes, yes!" Henriette interrupted, suddenly standing by Kitty's side in
defiance of her arrogant sister.
"These rights I in no wise interfere with, as I am fully conscious,"
Kitty continued. "Matters must stand ill with you, Flora, when you see
in the kindly actions of others a hostile element, that can imperil your
position----"
"Imperil?" Flora repeated, clapping her hands, with a laugh. "Dearest
and wisest of young moralists, you are under a slight mistake. Love
that could pass unharmed through the fiery trial which I intentionally
prepared for it can be imperilled by nothing in this world."
"Too true," Henriette murmured, in a sad, subdued tone. "It needs all my
remembrance of Bruck's former firmness of purpose and true manliness to
prevent his appearing to me now utterly weak."
"Of course," Flora continued, noticing Henriette's remark only by a
slight shrug, "I am speaking merely with regard to the time between now
and September, during which courtesy prompts me to make every concession
to the dean's widow. In L---- everything will be different: matters will
arrange themselves, and Bruck will find in the first weeks of our
marriage that such a wife as his aunt would choose for him would be not
only an insupportable burden, but an actual impossibility. When he sees
me presiding in society he will acknowledge my superiority,--he will
enjoy the lustre that my ease and grace as mistress of his household
shed upon his distinguished position, when he finds that my holding
aloof from housekeeping cares entails no pecuniary sacrifice on his
part. I have calculated everything, and find that besides my pin-money I
shall have quite sufficient income to pay out of my own pocket the wages
of a housekeeper and capital cook."
As she spoke, she looked at her nails with a smile, and then turned
aside with a haughty bend of her head. The tall mirror reflected a face
and figure of dazzling beauty, but it was impossible to imagine that
woman bending in love and anxiety over the couch of a sick child, or
engaged in the thousand offices of affection and care to which the true
wife and mother is prompted by the loftiest impulses of her nature.
Her gaze wandered from the contemplation of her own loveliness to the
girl clad in white standing before the blue velvet portiere, that
brought into relief the youthful beauty of her figure, the incomparable
freshness and delicacy of her colour beneath the heavy plaits of hair
that crowned a face in which the dark eyes shone like stars. If in
Flora was seen the woman of intellect who had already attempted to
pierce the mystery of existence, her youngest sister was the type of
maidenly innocence and spotless purity. Perhaps this displeased her,
for she smiled and nodded scornfully at the young girl's reflection in
the mirror.
"Yes, yes, little one, you will not long preserve that modest-violet
air, and the domestic duties which Lukas has in her exaggerated ideas of
this world so foolishly insisted upon your performing, will be as much
out of place in your sphere of life as in mine. Moritz will never
endure the jangle of a bunch of keys at your girdle,--rely upon that,
even although he should gallantly promise you ten poultry-yards. He,
with his brand-new stamp of rank, will insist more upon the aristocratic
whiteness and softness of his wife's hands than does our most gracious
prince himself."
Long before she had finished Kitty had moved, with a blush, to where the
mirror no longer reflected her image. "What do Moritz's views upon the
subject matter to me?" she asked, half turning round, while she looked
in inquiring surprise at her sister.
"Oh, Flora, Flora, how can you be so thoughtless?" Henriette exclaimed,
with a timid glance towards Kitty's expressive face.
"Nonsense! Moritz will be very grateful to me for breaking ground for
him. And do you suppose Kitty has not known all about it this long
time? Never was there a girl over fifteen whose nerves of sensibility
were not electrically aware of a man's preference for her. Whoever
denies it is either stupid or a refined coquette." Again she
contemplated herself in the mirror, and pulled the curls lower over her
brow. "Any one who has observed our youngest's confiding, clinging
manner in a certain direction cannot well be mistaken; eh, Kitty,--you
understand me?" And from beneath her raised arm she smiled archly at
her sister.
"No, I do not understand you," the girl replied, hastily; an undefined
mixture of indignation and intuitive dislike stirring within her.
"Come, Kitty, let us go," said Henriette, passing her arm around her
sister's waist, to draw her towards the door. "I cannot bear this!" she
added, angrily.
"Nonsense! do not be vexed, Henriette," laughed Flora, holding out the
jewel-case to Kitty. "Here, my child; do not leave this here, where the
servants are coming and going continually."
Like a child, Kitty involuntarily put her hands behind her. "Moritz must
take them back," she said, decidedly. "Your grandmother is quite
right;--it is an unsuitable gift; such a necklace would not become my
neck."
"And you expect me to believe in such naive unconsciousness?" Flora
asked, as if quite out of patience. "Such affectation is absurd in a
girl of your age. There is the lace shawl that Moritz gave
grandmamma;--she scorns it; she is more sensitive than your sisters, who
think it very natural that your gift should outvalue theirs
fourfold,--and you pretend not to understand why? Do not be ridiculous!
You hear the hammering yonder in the pavilion every day from morning
until night. The entire household, down to the very workmen, know that
a home is being arranged there for grandmamma, so that the councillor's
young wife may preside here alone. Well, little innocence, shall I
speak still more plainly?"
Hitherto the young girl had stood motionless, following her sister's
words with a dawning comprehension of their meaning, as if some
dangerous serpent were slowly uncoiling its slimy folds in her presence.
But now her lip curled in a proud smile. "Do not trouble yourself,--at
last I understand you," she said, slowly, her astonishment revealing
itself in the clear ring of her voice. "You have gone about it far more
wisely than did your grandmother to make my further stay in this house
impossible."
"Kitty!" Henriette exclaimed. "No, there you are wrong. Flora has been
heedless and thoughtless, but she never meant that." She went close to
her sister's side and looked tenderly in her face. "And why should such
words drive you away from the house, Kitty?" she asked, in a caressing
but anxious whisper. "Are you really unconscious of the love so
unequivocally displayed for you? See, I have often wished for
death,--but if it were possible that you should ever be mistress here in
our father's house, I could----"
Kitty extricated herself impatiently from the encircling arm. "Never!"
she cried, shaking her head indignantly, her whole maidenly soul in
revolt against the consciousness to which she had been so suddenly and
rudely awakened.
"Indeed,--never?" Flora repeated. "Perhaps the _parti_ is not
sufficiently distinguished, eh? You are waiting for some needy count or
prince, who, after the fashion of the day, will come to release, not
Dornroeschen herself, but her money-bags from the spell. Well, the
present time is by no means poor in such marriages! And we know, too,
how that unfortunate incumbrance, the wife, usually fares. If you would
hear perpetually how your grandfather drove the mill-wagon and your
grandmother went barefoot, then marry into some noble family. I really
should like to know what you find to object to in Moritz, or rather what
can justify you in rejecting his hand. You are very wealthy, to be sure,
but we know where your money came from. You are young, but no beauty,
child; and as for your talent, which you well know how to bring forward,
it is but a spark assiduously fanned into a little flame by ambitious
teachers, and will soon be extinguished when they can no longer look to
you for the rich reward of their services."
"Flora!" Henriette interrupted her.
"Be quiet! I speak in your interest now," Flora continued, dismissing
her remonstrance with a decided wave of her hand. "Perhaps, Kitty, you
think Moritz ought to display a more passionate affection for you. My
dear child, he is a middle-aged man, who has long outlived a
school-girl's romantic idea of love. It is, besides, a question whether
you will ever be loved for yourself alone,--that must always be a
question in the case of such an heiress. I cannot understand you.
Hitherto you have devoted yourself to the care of an invalid, as any
confirmed old maid might have done, because--well, apparently because no
one desired you to do so; and now, when Henriette makes her future
existence dependent upon your remaining here, you wish to go. For my
part, I should be far more content in L---- if I knew that you had our
sister in charge; and as for Bruck, you have just had a proof, poor
child, of how little there is of sympathy between you,--he prefers to
have that spoiled boy Job Brandau beneath his roof, to your constant
presence there; but, nevertheless, I am sure that, since he is obliged
to leave his patient here, he would like to know that she has some one
with her whom she really loves."
Henriette, pale as ashes, leaned against the wall, incapable of speech,
so great was her distress at Flora's ruthless and heartless enumeration
of everything that could humiliate and wound her sister's heart. Kitty,
however, had entirely recovered her self-possession.
"We two will discuss this alone, Henriette," she said, calmly; but the
lips with which she touched the invalid's brow quivered, and the fingers
that clasped Henriette's thin hand were cold as ice. "Go to your room
now, I pray you;" she looked at her watch; "it is time for you to take
your drops. I will come back shortly."
She left the room without looking again at Flora.
"Conceited as ever! I verily believe she is offended at being thought
no beauty, and thinks that such men as Bruck should follow in her
train," the beautiful woman said, ironically. Then, while Henriette
silently gathered up and carried away her gift and the jewel-casket, she
passed on, humming a gay air, to the room whither the two gentlemen had
withdrawn, and, tapping lightly at the door, called to them that it was
very impolite to leave the heroine of the day alone for so long a time.