More than three months had passed, during which Kitty had studied as
never before, giving hours to her music daily, and trying to find
forgetfulness in devotion to duty. Henriette kept a kind of diary, which
she sent every week to her sister. It told her how the life in the
villa had gone on since her departure. She could "read between the
lines" that the Frau President had been evidently much relieved thereby,
and had established a rule in the villa more despotic than ever.
Henriette told how her grandmother had praised Kitty's "thorough good
taste" in what she had done, while Flora shrugged her shoulders and
spoke of "school-girl's nonsense." She herself had informed the
councillor of his ward's absence on the evening of the ball; he had
turned quite pale with anger, and had been out of humour with her for
days in consequence of her share in the affair. Flora, too, had been
cross and out of sorts all that evening, for her lover had excused
himself from appearing, on the plea of professional duties.
The councillor had written to Kitty announcing a visit to Dresden in
June, when he had "an explanation to make;" but Henriette, as the time
approached, told of his being overwhelmed with business, of the myriads
of telegrams that were sent from Berlin to him as soon as he left that
capital, where, indeed, he passed more time than in his home. The visit
remained unpaid; a short business letter now and then was all she
received from him, and her last remittance was sent through his
bookkeeper,--an unprecedented occurrence.
Kitty breathed more freely,--the dreaded conflict was not to take place.
Her guardian had seen from her reply to his letter that his hopes were
futile, and had quietly acquiesced. The young girl might then have
returned to her post as Henriette's nurse, but the doctor's wife
decidedly opposed this scheme, because Kitty, as she often anxiously
remarked, had returned home from her former visit much changed, having
lost all her youthful spirits and the fresh colour in her cheeks.
Besides, the Baroness Steiner, with her suite, had now been quartered in
the villa for two months, and had left no vacant corner on the third
floor.
Kitty herself shuddered at the thought of a return so long as there had
been no removal to L----. She knew too well that it would be impossible
for her in that circle to maintain her outward self-possession. In
Dresden she was obliged to exert all her strength of character not to
show that her peace of mind was fled, that she was always struggling
fiercely against the sweet bewildering force that had taken up its abode
in her heart, and which seemed like a crime. Henriette had never
recalled her, in spite of the passionate declaration repeatedly made
that she longed for her "true, strong sister;" on the contrary, she
spoke with enthusiastic gratitude of the tenderness and care lavished
upon her by the dean's widow. Her diary was a continued narrative, in
which two people played the principal part,--the doctor and his aunt.
Every occurrence in the house by the river was duly detailed, even to
the untimely death of the yellow hen, a victim to a recurrence of savage
hatred on the part of her enemy the house-dog; and the unusual plenty of
the grapes in the garden. It was even thought worth while to tell of a
"snow-white kitten, whose favorite place was the Frau Dean's own chair."
These were innocent items; but the diary was usually gloomy and
melancholy in tone; in some parts it read as if the pages had been
wetted with tears, in others as if the pen had been guided by a hand of
fire. Of the relation between Flora and the doctor not a word was said,
but great distress was expressed that the latter had been so changed by
the wearing anxieties of his profession: only towards his patients was
he uniformly gentle and kind; in general society he had become taciturn
and irritable, while in appearance every one noticed how greatly he was
altered.
Thus gradually the time appointed for the marriage drew near. Flora had
neglected to invite her distant half-sister. Henriette wrote that her
head was full of a series of fetes that were being given in her honour,
and that with regard to her trousseau and her marriage festivities her
whims had almost driven the trades-people to despair. The invalid
seemed in great distress of mind; she repeatedly dwelt upon her
inability to sustain alone all the bustle and excitement of the
approaching marriage. The dean's widow could be of no assistance to her
at that time, since she herself was suffering greatly at the thought of
a separation from her nephew, and was often absent-minded and sad.
These complaints grew more and more frequent, until one evening a few
days before the marriage a telegram arrived which ran, "Come instantly;
I am miserable and ill."
No delay was to be thought of; even the doctor's wife consented that
Kitty should go immediately; and the girl herself--she shivered in
nervous dread of what was to come, and yet she exulted in the blissful
thought that she should see once more the man who was--her future
brother-in-law.
Again on a morning in September she found herself in the large room in
the castle mill. She had come by the night train, having telegraphed to
Franz to meet her. And certainly a mother's hands could not have
prepared everything for her arrival more lovingly than had old Susy.
The room, illumined by the green light penetrating the chestnut-boughs
before the windows, was redolent with the fragrance of the heliotrope,
roses, and mignonette upon the window-sills, fresh white covers had been
put upon all the tables, a tempting snowy bed stood in the recess, and
upon the large oaken table stood the familiar copper "machine" full of
hot coffee. Even the home-made cake was ready strewn with sugar, beside
the gilt china cup that had been the pride of the corner cupboard during
the lifetime of the old miller's wife.
Again the girlish tread was heard upon the white scoured floor, and
through the open window came the cooing of the doves and the murmur of
the distant weir,--she was at home. She would visit her invalid sister
from here, and upon no account accept the councillor's hospitality, in
spite of the Frau President's scorn of "familiar intercourse between the
villa and the mill."
Kitty was in a strange mood. Dread of her first visit to the villa;
painful longing for the house by the river, the weather-cock upon the
roof of which she discerned with a beating heart from her southern
window, and which she might not approach; passionate impatience to see,
if only once more, the tall figure which she had first seen here in the
mill, and which it was torture to confess to herself, as she did daily,
she had loved from that moment; all this stirred within her, in addition
to the strange, inexplicable foreboding and anxiety that possessed her
soul. For months the columns of the newspapers had been filled with
sensational intelligence in regard to the bursting of the great
swindling bubble of the day in Vienna, and shortly afterwards of a
similar catastrophe in Berlin. The destruction of this modern Tower of
Babel was the topic of the day in every public place, in every
drawing-room; it had been discussed even in the small aesthetic circle
in Kitty's Dresden home. In the railway-carriage on the road from
Dresden to M---- it had been the inexhaustible theme for conversation
among her fellow-travellers, and now with her own eyes Kitty could
behold one of the results of this calamity. Through the cooing of the
doves and the distant murmur of the weir came the sound of excited human
voices, and just behind the last chestnut the young girl had a view of
the gravelled space in front of the factory. It was swarming, as she
had seen it once before, with workmen, some silent and gloomy, others
gesticulating wildly and talking loudly. The stock company that had
purchased the factory of the councillor had failed; the officers of the
law had already appeared in the building, and the employes had not yet
recovered from the shock of the sad news.
"Yes, yes, so it goes," said Franz, as he brought in Kitty's trunk.
"Those people were too well off, and they thought they deserved
more,--now they will live for a while from hand to mouth, and then from
bad to worse. All of them would like to pick up money off the streets;
and who can blame them, when their betters do the same? He's a
fortunate fellow who gets safely through the stream," he went on,
slapping his pockets; "'an honest store by work made more' is my motto;
no need to lie awake o' nights then. Those who don't know how to
speculate had better let it alone. There's the Herr Councillor, to be
sure, firm as a rock; he's too long-headed to be touched." Then, with
an air of great wisdom, raising his forefinger, "Yesterday he got back
from Berlin, finer than ever. I had just taken a load of corn to the
station,--hey, how his black horses flew past! He understands it all.
They said he had just made another lucky hit, and he looked like a man
with millions at his command. He has been away for a long time, and I
dare say would not have returned now but for the fine doings they are to
have over there to-night."
To-night! The wedding was to take place on the next day but one, and
immediately afterwards the newly-married pair were to set off upon a
bridal tour. Kitty knew it, she had read it often enough in Henriette's
diary, and yet the thought came to her now with a shock of terror.
"They are to have a fine time at the villa to-night," Susy said, as she
handed her young mistress a cup of coffee. "I was talking yesterday
with the councillor's Anton, and he says they haven't room enough for
all the guests who are coming. They have built a theatre, and ever so
many young ladies from town are to dress up, and the evergreens have
been coming by wagon-loads to ornament the house."
The factory clock was striking eleven as Kitty walked over to the villa.
The murmur of voices was still audible as she went through the
mill-yard, but scarcely had the small door in the wall separating the
park from the mill-garden closed behind her before an aristocratic
silence reigned around.
Franz was right; one felt here that the noise and confusion of the
money-market could not touch the rich man and his belongings; that the
devouring waves of misfortune and ruin could not even wet the soles of
his feet. Ah! there stretched the beautiful lake. It had absorbed the
azure of the sky, and lay a giant sapphire of spotless purity. It had
been finished thus quickly at an enormous expense of money and labour.
Swans were gliding to and fro upon its placid waters, and near the shore
rocked a gaily-painted boat, fastened at the end by a chain. Kitty had
left the park a mass of tender spring green; now the shadows had
deepened. The sun's fiery rays, pouring down in all their summer
splendour, had burned away the delicate colours of the flowers of
spring, and had kindled in their stead the torches of the cannas and the
straight stems of the gladiolus upon every bit of lawn that peeped forth
among the shrubbery.
How many hands must be employed to maintain such exquisite neatness
everywhere! Not a fallen leaf lay upon the paths, not a blade of grass
broke the even line of the gravelled roads, no fading blossom was left
upon the bushes. And in the distance, among the groups of majestic
trees, appeared the imposing facade of the new stables; their erection
also had been so swift as to seem almost the work of magic. For all
there had been expended immense sums; whatever was flung abroad in the
stock market, the golden stream here seemed inexhaustible. None of the
electric shocks that had wrought such destruction in the business world
had been felt here.
Passing on beneath the shady arches of the linden avenue, Kitty
approached the villa. Never had the fairy structure seemed to her so
aristocratically unapproachable as to-day in the golden light of
morning, the gay flag waving from the roof,--a fluttering sign of
welcome floating on the air. Involuntarily the young girl laid her hand
upon her throbbing heart; she had not been invited, and yet she had
come. It was a sacrifice indeed to sisterly affection, this crushing
down of her own proud nature. Behind the bronze tracery of the balcony,
the Frau President's lap-dog was running to and fro, barking at the
visitor with all his old hostility, and the parrot, in his gilded cage
in the blue drawing-room, screamed in chorus.
As Kitty entered the door, a lady glided past her, holding her
handkerchief to her face, and above its lace border she glanced shyly at
the young girl from eyes swollen and red with weeping. Kitty recognized
her; it was the gay young wife of a major, accustomed to every luxury.
The elegance and variety of her toilettes had been the talk of the
capital. She hurried around the corner of the house towards the
shrubbery, probably to remove there the traces of tears before she was
seen upon the public highway.
"There is nothing left for her husband but to shoot himself; they say he
has lost every stiver," Kitty heard one of the servants say, as she
passed through the hall. "Serves him right! What has an army officer
to do with speculating in stocks that he knows nothing of? Then his
wife comes to our master, and cries her eyes out to beg him to help them
out of the mire. A pretty piece of business! If he were to help all
those who have been to him lately, he might take up his staff and beg on
the road; he would have nothing left for himself."
Another victim, then, of the terrible crisis! Kitty shuddered, and
ascended the stairs unperceived. A solemn silence reigned in the third
story. Mechanically she opened the door of the room that had formerly
been assigned to her. It was plain that the Frau Baroness Steiner
reigned here no longer; but the room had evidently not been arranged to
receive another guest. Much of the furniture had been removed, and in
its stead the walls were lined with draped tables covered with a
profusion of articles, displayed with great taste and care,--the
gorgeous trousseau of the professor's wife in spe; in the centre of the
room, upon a tall dress-stand, hung a robe of snowy satin, covered with
lace and orange-blossoms, the heavy train lying long upon the
floor,--Flora's wedding-gown. Kitty turned away her eyes, and closed the
door; and in a few moments she clasped in her arms Henriette, who, at
sight of her sister, broke into such a transport of joy that it seemed
the result of relief from terrible pain.
The sick girl was alone. No one had any time to give her to-day, she
said. The councillor had taken upon himself all the arrangements for
the festival given in honour of Flora's marriage, and everything was to
be conducted upon a scale of great magnificence. He was determined to
show the capital what money could do. To be sure, this was the weak
point in his character. With her usual inconsequence, she had neglected
to tell any one of the telegram she had dispatched to Kitty. Such an
announcement would have been entirely superfluous, she declared, in
reply to Kitty's look of surprise and dismay; every one knew that she
had promised to return and nurse her poor Henriette whenever she was
sent for, and as for an unexpected encounter with the councillor, Kitty
might rest perfectly easy; Moritz had "a new flame" in Berlin, whence he
had returned of late, and especially yesterday, remarkably
absent-minded; only smiling archly, and making no denial, when Flora had
rallied him.
To these communications Kitty made no reply; she was possessed by the
conviction that it had been high time for her to return. She found the
sick girl much changed, and in a state of feverish agitation. The hard
hollow cough shook her emaciated frame much more frequently than
formerly, her hands were burning hot, and her breath came with great
difficulty. She had hitherto always denied herself the relief of tears;
her will was of iron. But to-day her beautiful eyes were swollen and
disfigured with weeping. She was consumed by fear, she wailed, hiding
her head on Kitty's breast, lest Bruck, with all his love for Flora,
should be wretchedly unhappy; and although nothing had been said by the
dean's widow about it, she was sure the old lady felt as she did, and
was miserable. Kitty admonished her, rather curtly, that this was
solely Bruck's affair; no one had had more opportunity than he of being
thoroughly aware of Flora's egotistical nature. If he persisted in
making her his wife, he was surely prepared to meet the consequences.
Henriette started up in alarm; the words sounded so harsh. Indeed,
there seemed a strange alteration in Kitty; a kind of stern reserve was
in her whole manner, as though she had accepted her fate after a hard
struggle.