"A pity no birds are singing," Frederick said one day to Miss Burns, who
had opened his bedroom window wide.
"Yes," said Miss Burns, "it is a pity."
"Because," Frederick went on, "you say it is already greening on the
banks of Lake Hanover."
"What does that mean--'greening'?" asked Miss Burns, who did not know the
German word he had used. He laughed.
"It means spring is coming, and spring without the singing of birds is a
deaf and dumb spring."
"Come to England. There's where you hear birds."
"You come to Germany, Miss Burns. There's where you hear birds,"
Frederick mimicked his friend's drawl.
When the time came for him to sit up for a while, he refused.
"I don't want to get out of bed. I feel too comfortable lying here," he
declared.
Soon after the fever left him, he ceased to feel ill, and for the last
week they had been bringing him books, entertaining him with stories and
anecdotes of the neighbourhood, and reading the papers to him, all in
moderation, of course. They divined his wishes from his eyes. His
microscope was put beside his bed, and he set seriously to work to
examine specimens from his own body, an occupation that brought many
jests down on him. The horror of his illness had turned into a diversion,
a pleasant subject of study.
It was not until he had left his bed and was sitting in a comfortable
chair wrapped in blankets that he inquired whether a letter had not
come from his parents. Miss Burns told him his father had written and
recounted those things in his letter which she knew would please
Frederick and ease his mind. She was astonished to hear the pale
convalescent say:
"I am convinced poor Angèle took her own life. Well," he continued, "I
have suffered what I had to suffer; but I will not reject the hand that I
feel is graciously extended towards me. By that I mean," he added,
thinking from the expression in Miss Burns's eyes that she did not
understand him, "that for a' that and a' that, I am glad to be restored
to life and confidence in life."
One day, while Miss Burns was telling of some eminent men in different
countries with whom she had become acquainted, mild complaints escaped
her, showing she had suffered disenchantments.
"In a year," she said, "I am going back to England, to some village, and
devote myself to the education of neglected children. The sculptor's
profession does not satisfy me."
"How would you like this, Miss Burns," said the convalescent, with a
frank, roguish smile, "wouldn't you like to educate a rather difficult
big child?"
Peter and Eva had agreed not to mention Ingigerd Hahlström's name. But
one day Frederick handed Miss Burns a piece of paper with a verse written
in lead pencil in a trembling hand.
"To whom does this refer?" he asked.
"Have threads been spun? No, there were none!
We were so chill, so small and lone.
Have we to higher regions gone?
To give the key Peter was not prone.
I saw the sacramental stone
And laid my hallowed hands thereon.
Alas! the bread and wine were gone.
With dazzling radiance all things shone,
'Twas base deceit; I was undone."
Miss Burns was touched to see that his thoughts were still engaged with
the little dancer. On another occasion he said to her:
"I am not fitted to be a physician. I am incapable of making the
sacrifice to humanity of pursuing an occupation that depresses me so.
I have a riotous imagination. Perhaps I could be a writer. But I am
determined to become a sculptor. While I was sick, especially at the end
of the second week, I remodelled all the works of Phidias and Michael
Angelo. Don't misunderstand me, Eva. In becoming a sculptor, I am no
longer ambitious of distinction. I shall merely be rendering homage to
the greatness of art. While remaining a faithful workman asking nothing
for myself, I may in time succeed in mastering the nude form sufficiently
to produce at least one good piece."
"You know I have confidence in your talent," said Miss Burns.
"Then, what do you think of this plan, Miss Eva? The income from my
wife's estate is about five thousand marks, enough for the education of
my three children. I receive an annuity of three thousand marks. Do you
think we five could end our days in peace in a little house with a
studio, say, near Florence?"
Miss Burns's answer to the weighty question was a hearty laugh.
She was intimately acquainted with the artistic disposition and so,
perhaps, was actually well fitted to educate adult children. She had been
the good friend and comrade of two or three great artists in France
and England, and had a soothing way of entering into the work, the
interests, and the experiences of such extraordinary men. Neither of her
parents had been an artist. Her father had been a plain business man.
Yet both had possessed that veneration and love of art and artists which
is almost as rare as the creative gift. In the museum at Birmingham,
there were pictures by Burne-Jones and Rossetti and a collection of
drawings, the gift of her father while still a prosperous man. She
herself was not convinced that she had an imperative calling to art. Her
passion was to be useful to art in serving artists. This was not the
first time, and Frederick knew it, that she had acted the part of the
good Samaritan. She was always ready to sacrifice herself in order to
help artists out of every sort of difficulty.
"I have no desire to be a Bonifacius Ritter," said Frederick. "A great
collection of studios, with works turned out by wholesale, no matter how
excellent they may be, does not suit my disposition. What I want is a
workshop opening on a garden, where I can pick violets in winter and
break off branches of evergreen oak, yew, and laurel. There, in peace and
quiet, hidden from the world, I should like to devote myself to art and
culture in general. The myrtle, too, would have to blossom again within
my garden wall, Miss Burns." Miss Burns laughed and paid no attention to
the allusion.
She thoroughly approved of his plans from her own healthy point of view.
"There are enough people," she said, "who are born physicians and men of
action, and there are far too many entering those careers and jostling
one another out of the way."
She spoke of Ritter with sympathy, yet in a tone of superiority, and
smiled with benignant understanding upon his naïve penetration into the
regions of the Upper Four Hundred.
"Life," she said, "when it is eager to hurry on with a show of vivacity,
demands credulity, love of pleasure, ambition. I, myself, before my
father lost the greater part of his fortune, got to know high life in
England through and through. I found it insipid and boresome."
When Frederick was able to stand alone and walk and go up and down
stairs, Miss Burns left for New York to complete the work that she had
begun in Ritter's studio, wishing to finish it before the middle of
May, when she intended to return to England to straighten out some legal
matters in connection with a small inheritance from her mother, who had
died two years before. She had already engaged passage on the _Auguste
Victoria_ of the Hamburg-American line. Frederick von Kammacher let her
go without protest. He did not try to detain her. He profoundly admired
the girl who was so strong and stately; and he had conceived of his
future existence as a state of lasting companionship with her. There was
Dutch and German blood combined with the culture and polish of the
Englishwoman. Wherever she settled down, wherever she busied herself, she
produced the cosey charm of the English home. She was healthy and, as
Frederick had to admit, very beautiful. He did not detect the faintest
symptom of the thing he most dreaded, feminine hysteria.
"I should like to have a comrade like her for life," he thought. "I
should like her to be the mother of Angèle's children."