A shadow fell on the entrance of the arbour--there stood Sandow, who
had returned to fetch his forgotten pocket-book, and thus became a
witness of the scene.
For a moment he stood speechless and motionless, then he approached and
cried, with the greatest indignation--
"Gustave!--Miss Palm!"
The girl started violently, even Gustave turned pale as he released
her. The catastrophe which at any price he would yet delay, had burst,
he saw that at a glance; now he must stand firm.
"What is all this?" asked Sandow, measuring his brother with blazing
eyes. "How dare you treat thus a young girl under the shelter of my
house, and you, Miss Palm, how could you permit such conduct? It could
not be agreeable to you? And yet there seems already a thorough
understanding!"
Frida made no attempt to reply to the bitter reproaches heaped upon
her. She looked at Gustave as if she expected him to defend her. He had
already collected himself, and said impressively to his brother--
"Listen to me, you are in error, and I will explain all to you."
"It needs no explanation," interrupted Sandow. "I have seen what you
have been guilty of, and you will not try to deny the evidence of my
own eyes. I always thought you frivolous, but not so dishonourable, but
that you have, almost under the eyes of Jessie, your promised bride"--
"Frank, stop there!" cried Gustave, with such determination that
Sandow, although trembling with rage, was silent. "I cannot allow this,
my self-sacrifice will not go so far as that. Frida, come to me. You
see that we must speak. He must learn the truth."
Frida obeyed. She came to his side, and he laid his arm protectingly
round her. Sandow looked bewildered from one to the other. The affair
was unintelligible to him, he had clearly no presentiment of the truth.
"You wrong me by your accusations," said Gustave, "and you wrong Frida
too. If I kissed her I had a right to do so. She has been my charge
from her earliest youth. The poor forsaken child was neglected by
everyone who ought to have protected and sheltered her. I was the only
one who recognised the right of kindred. I have used that right, and
can support my actions by it."
It was astonishing how deeply earnest the voice of the irrepressible
jester had become. At the first words a terrible presentiment seemed to
seize Sandow. Every tinge of colour left his face, he became paler and
paler, and with his eyes fixed on Frida, he repeated in a tuneless and
mechanical voice--
"Your right of kindred? What--what do you mean?"
Gustave raised the head of the girl, which leant on his shoulder, and
turned the face full towards his brother.
"If you have not yet guessed, then read it in this face, perhaps it
will now be clear to you. What likeness is it that you have remembered
there. I have certainly deceived you, been forced to deceive you since
you thrust every possibility of an understanding from you. Then I
seized the only means, and brought Frida to you. I thought you would by
degrees learn to comprehend the feeling which warmed your half-frozen
heart, I thought it must at last dawn upon you, that the stranger who
attracted you so powerfully had a right to your love. That is now
impossible, the discovery has come too suddenly and unexpectedly, but
look at those features, they are your own. For long years you have
suffered under a dark and gloomy illusion, and have punished a
guiltless child for the guilt of the mother. You awake at last and open
your arms to her--to your own, your neglected child."
A long oppressive silence followed these words. Sandow staggered, and
for a moment it seemed as if he would give way altogether, but he stood
upright. His face worked terribly, and his breast rose and fell quickly
with the gasping breath, but he spoke no word.
"Come, Frida!" said Gustave gently, "come to your father, you see he
waits for you."
He drew her forwards and would have led her to her father, but he had
now regained his power of speech. He made a movement as if to thrust
her from him, and hoarse and roughly cried--
"Back! So easy a victory you need not expect. Now I see through the
whole comedy."
"Comedy!" repeated Gustave, deeply hurt. "Frank, in such a moment can
you speak thus."
"And what else is it?" broke out Sandow. "What else do you call that
miserable jugglery which you have carried on behind by back? So, for
weeks past I have been surrounded in my own house, with lies and
deceit. And even Jessie has joined you; without her help it would have
been impossible. All have conspired against me. You," he turned to
Frida as if he would pour all his rage and scorn upon her devoted head,
but he encountered the girl's eyes, and the words died on his lips.
He was silent for some moments, and then continued with the bitterest
contempt--
"No doubt they described to you in very enticing colours the benefit of
having a father from whom you might inherit wealth, and who could give
you a brilliant position in life. That is why you have stolen into my
house with lies. But what I swore when I left Europe that I stand by. I
have no child, will have none, were the law ten times to adjudge me
one. Go back over the sea to whence you came. I will not be the victim
of deceit."
"That is what I feared," said Gustave, half aloud. "Frida," he stepped
quickly to her, "now you must rouse the feelings of a father. You see
he will not listen to me; to you he must, and will listen. Speak, then,
at all events open your lips, do you not feel what hangs on this
moment?"
But Frida spoke not, and did not open her lips, which were convulsively
pressed together. She was deadly pale, and in her face was the same
expression of hard, settled obstinacy which disfigured her father's
countenance.
"Let me alone, Uncle Gustave," she replied, "I cannot entreat now, and
if my life depended on it, I could not. I will only tell my father I am
innocent of the 'deceit' with which he reproaches me."
The delicate form was suddenly drawn up to its full height, the dark
eyes blazed, and the deeply injured feelings burst forth, passionately
overflowing all bounds, like a stream which can no longer be
controlled.
"You need not repulse me so harshly, I should have gone in the moment
when it became clear to me that the one thing I sought here--my
father's heart--was denied me. I have never known a parent's love. My
mother was estranged from me, of my father I only knew that he lived on
this side the Atlantic, and had cast me off because he hated my mother.
I came against my will, because I neither knew nor loved you. I only
feared you. I came because my uncle said that you were lonely and
embittered, and in spite of your wealth had no happiness in life; that
you needed love, and that I alone could give it to you. By those means
he forced me to follow him, in spite of my opposition, and by those
means has he ever prevented me when I begged to return home. But now he
will not wish to detain me, and if he did, I would tear myself away.
Keep your wealth, father, that which you think has brought me to you.
It has brought no blessing to you; I knew it long ago, and hear it
again in your words. If you were poor and desolate I would try to love
you, now I cannot. I will leave you within the hour!"
The unmeasured violence with which these words were spoken, or rather
with which they rushed from Frida's lips had something terrible in it,
but it also betrayed something which produced a more powerful effect
than all the prayers and petitions could have done--the resemblance
between the father and the daughter.
In the ordinary course of life the resemblance between the girl of
sixteen and the already grey-haired man might have disappeared, or only
have been remarkable occasionally; here, in the moment of highest
excitement, it found such overwhelming, such convincing expression,
that every doubt vanished on the spot.
Sandow must have seen it whether he would or not. Those were his eyes,
which flamed before him, that was his voice which rang in his ears,
that was his own dark, unbending obstinacy which now turned against
himself. Trait by trait he saw himself reproduced in his daughter. The
voice of blood and nature spoke so loud and convincingly that even the
long treasured illusion of the father began to yield.
Frida turned to her uncle.
"In an hour I shall be ready to start! Forgive me, Uncle Gustave, that
I have so badly carried out all your teaching, that I have rendered
useless all your self-sacrifice, but I cannot do otherwise!"
She threw herself wildly on his breast, but only for a moment, then she
tore herself away, fled past her father, and rushed like a hunted thing
through the garden towards the house.
As Sandow saw his daughter in his brother's arms, he made a movement as
if to tear her away, but his hand fell powerless by his side, and he
sank as if crushed upon a seat, and buried his face in his hands.
Gustave, on his side, made no attempt to detain his niece. He stood
quietly there with folded arms and watched his brother. At last he
asked--
"Do you believe it now?"
Sandow raised himself; he tried to reply, but the words failed him, and
no sound came from his lips.
"I thought this encounter must have convinced you," continued Gustave.
"The likeness is really startling. You are reflected in your child as
in a mirror. Frank, if you do not believe this testimony I have indeed
lost all hope."
Sandow passed his hand over his brow, bedewed with cold sweat, and
looked towards the house, where Frida had long since vanished.
"Call her back!" said he, hoarsely.
"That would be labour in vain, she would not listen to me. Would you
return if you had been so driven away? Frida is her father's daughter,
she will not approach you again--you must fetch her yourself."
Again silence, but this only lasted for a minute, then Sandow rose,
slowly and hesitatingly, but he rose. Gustave laid his hand upon his
arm.
"One word, Frank, before you go. Frida knows of the past only what she
was compelled to know, not one syllable more. She does not dream _why_
you have driven her away, nor what fearful suspicion has kept her all
these years from her father's heart. I could not bring myself to reveal
that to the child. She believes that you hated her mother because she
was unhappy in her marriage with you, left you and married another man,
and that this hatred has descended upon her. This reason satisfied her,
she asked for no other, so let it remain. I think you will understand
that I could not let your daughter look into the depth of your domestic
misery, and concealed the worst from her. If you do not mention it she
need never learn it."
"I--thank you!"
The elder brother seized the hand of the younger, the latter returned
the pressure heartily and firmly. Then Sandow turned and went rapidly
away.
"He is going to her," said Gustave, with a sigh of relief. "God be
thanked; now they can arrange the rest together."