AN EQUESTRIAN ARTIST.
Johanna accompanied Helena's messenger to the village. Her longing to
see Lisbeth lent wings to her feet, and thrust into the background all
questions as to how she should conduct herself towards her step-mother.
And when, as soon as the inn garden was reached, the pretty little
figure came flying towards her, and Lisbeth's arms were round her neck,
while she loaded her sister with caresses, calling her by all the old
childish terms of endearment, Johanna forgot to be anything save
grateful to Helena for affording her such a pleasure, and she held out
her hand to her with emotion.
Helena clasped her in her arms. "Dear Johanna! how glad I am!" she said.
"But here is some one, too, who longs to see you. My husband. Receive
him kindly, I pray you."
With these words she led Johanna into the inn parlour. "Dear Carlo, here
she is," she added, with evident anxiety in her voice.
A broad-shouldered, middle-aged man, with a dark complexion, sparkling
brown eyes, black hair, and a thick black moustache, arose from the
window-seat. "Most happy, most happy!" he cried, in ringing tones,
taking Johanna's hand and shaking it without more ado. "I have heard
much that is fine about you, and have seen even more, for I think you
were the horsewoman we watched this morning, eh?"
"And you were the spectator who waved his hat?" said Johanna.
"Rather say admirer," Carlo Batti interrupted her. "Admirer! By Jove!
you know how to manage a horse! Where in all the world, Fraeulein, did
you learn to ride so famously?"
"Dear Carlo, had we not better sit down before we plunge into an
artistic discussion?" Helena asked, with some asperity. "Come, Johanna,
there is a sofa. Although it is a hard one----"
"Yes, yes, come!" Lisbeth exclaimed, drawing her sister towards it. "We
will sit down together, as we used to do in the twilight when you told
me stories."
"Do you remember them still?" Johanna said, gently. "I thought you would
forget me." And, seating herself on the sofa, she took the child into
her lap, and the little head was laid, as formerly, upon her shoulder.
"Forget!" Helena repeated, as she sank down in the other corner of the
sofa. "Forget you! That would be inexcusable, after all that you did for
her. No; she is a good, grateful little thing. She has talked of you
every day."
These were strange words from the lips of this woman. Lisbeth solved the
riddle. "Yes, my dear, good old darling, I talked of you all the time; I
wanted to come to you, and now I am not going away again. Mamma says
that she and Uncle Carlo do not need me now, and will leave me with
you."
Helena looked embarrassed. "How naughty, Lisbeth!" she cried. "And why
do you say 'Uncle Carlo'? He is papa."
The child sat upright in Johanna's lap. "But he is not my papa," she
said, waywardly. "Is he, Johanna?"
"Be quiet, you little mouse," Carlo Batti interposed, having drawn up a
chair beside Johanna and seated himself in it. "Dear Helena, do not
tease her; we can be just as good friends if she calls me Uncle Carlo."
And turning to Johanna, he continued: "Permit me to repeat my question,
'Of whom did you learn to ride?' Here are not only strength, security,
elegance, but also, if I do not mistake, a grand method----"
"Which I owe partly to my grandfather and partly to old Martin, his
groom," was Johanna's smiling reply.
"Genius, then! pure genius!" cried Carlo Batti, and his bronze face
flushed and his eager brown eyes sparkled. "I'll tell you what! Come to
us; put yourself in my hands, and, by Jove! I'll promise that in a year
you shall be as famous as--as----"
"Don't trouble yourself, dear Carlo," said Helena. "Johanna, as you
know, is about to marry a Herr von Doenninghausen."
"To be sure; I had forgotten. These infernal grand matches!" he
exclaimed, with a comical expression of despair. "You might search the
length and breadth of the country and not find such a talent as yours.
And you think of marriage, an irksome marriage! No, no! come to us. Just
try it!" And he seized Johanna's hand in a clasp from which it cost her
repeated efforts to withdraw it, and went on with enthusiasm: "I need
not tell you what it is to have under perfect control a horse,--a
strong, proud, noble creature; but you do not yet know what it is to
feel a thousand eyes riveted upon you in admiration, to hear a thousand
voices shouting applause. Try it; let me adjure you, try it! and I'll be
d--d if you do not say Carlo Batti is right--'the world belongs to the
artist, and it shall belong to me!' It belongs even more to a woman than
to one of us, especially when she looks like----" He laughed, and his
glance completed his sentence. "I cannot understand, Helena, how you
could tell me that Fraeulein Johanna was not beautiful. A brilliant
apparition for the ring,--entirely too brilliant. It would outshine all
others."
Johanna laughed; the man's coarse admiration was expressed with such
good-humoured simplicity that she could not resent it.
But Helena said, half irritated and half confused, "You forget entirely
that Johanna has arranged her future very differently." Then, smiling
sweetly, she added, in a sentimental tone, "You men never appreciate the
delight with which a true woman relinquishes art, even when she has
tasted its raptures and its triumphs, for the sake of her love. You,
indeed, dear Carlo, ought to know this."
He shrugged his shoulders, and his mobile features betrayed mingled
derision and impatience. "I had no objection to your remaining on the
stage,--but the grapes were sour!" he said. And, rising, he went to the
window, where he stood drumming on the pane, while Helena, who had
flushed crimson, said, with a forced smile, "Men are all alike, dear
Johanna, as you will learn. Carlo is one of the best of them."
Johanna made no reply. What a contrast there was between her father's
noble, intellectual personality and this good-humoured boor! But Helena
deferred to him, excused his lack of consideration, endured his rude
conduct, hung upon his words, and followed his every motion with loving
looks. The girl's heart was filled with bitterness and disgust, and
involuntarily she clasped Lisbeth closer in her arms, as if she could
shield the little one from such contact.
Helena stroked the child's curls caressingly. "You cannot think how good
Carlo is to Lisbeth!" she went on, in an undertone. "Because she was
continually begging for her Johanna, he did what I have never known him
to do before--sent on the baggage-train, and we do not follow it before
night by the express----"
Lisbeth sprang up. "Kind Uncle Carlo!" she cried, running to the window.
He turned round. "Come!" he said, kindly; and stooping, he stiffly held
out to her his open right hand. With a jump Lisbeth stood erect upon it,
and, holding by his raised left hand, was carried back thus to the sofa.
The sight gave pain to Johanna. She arose and took the child from its
step-father.
"An ungrateful public,--not even one round of applause!" He said,
laughing. "But never mind, you shall have a better some day." And,
turning to Johanna, he added, "She has made her appearance once, with
great applause and self-satisfaction. Hey, little mouse?"
"Oh, it was beautiful!" Lisbeth cried, with sparkling eyes. "Everything
I had on was pink and silver,--even my stockings; and I had silver wings
on my shoulders----"
Johanna closed her lips with a kiss. Her father's child in a circus!
Carlo Batti misunderstood her. "Yes, yes," he went on, with a conceited
smile, "you may well be proud of your little sister, and of her
advantages. Race--artist blood--and Carlo Batti to the fore,--the devil
must be in it if something does not come of all that."
"If it is not too much for her," Helena interposed. "Only see, Johanna,
how pale the little face is, now that the excitement of seeing you again
is over! That is Carlo's fault. He never knows when to stop!"
"Stuff!" he said, laughing. "The little lady grows too fast,--that's why
she is pale and tired sometimes. Say yourself, little mouse, which tires
you the most, I or your leather school-books?"
"Oh, the books, the horrid books!" cried the child, taking his
outstretched hand, and dancing about him like a little ballet-girl,
while he slowly turned round and round.
"So it goes all day long," Helena complained. "No need to hope for the
quiet ordered by the doctor when those two are together. Moreover, she
ought to have country air----" She broke off and looked inquiringly at
her step-daughter.
Johanna's face flushed; she felt that it was best to be frank. "How
gladly I would ask you to leave the child with me!" she replied. "But,
kind and generous as my grandfather is, he has not yet forgiven my
mother's marriage, and detests anything that can remind him of my
father."
"You see, Helena, it is just as I told you," Batti interrupted her;
adding, with a burst of rude laughter, "I know it--this aristocratic
rubbish, stupid, haughty, narrow-minded----"
"Carlo!" Helena whispered, with a glance towards Johanna.
He was not to be deterred, however. "What the deuce are you grimacing
about?" he asked. "She"--and he indicated Johanna--"is her father's
daughter, and proud of her name, is she not?"
"Indeed I am; but I prize my grandfather too, and love him dearly,
dearly!" she replied, and her eyes flashed.
He made a face, then held out to her his brown hairy hand. "You're the
girl for me!" he exclaimed, seizing and almost crushing her fingers in
his grasp. "Out with whatever is in your heart! A great pity that you're
going to marry. A God-gifted creature like yourself belongs on
horseback. And--down with the world!" He swung his arm as if it held a
riding-whip, by way of completing his sentence.
"Dear Johanna, you must not take amiss what he says," Helena began, with
a furtive smile.
"Let us alone, we understand each other!" he interrupted her. And
turning to Johanna, he continued: "Let us talk together like friends. If
your father, the actor, is unpopular up there,"--pointing with his thumb
over his shoulder towards the castle,--"I, the equestrian artist, must
be still more so. You need not reply: I know the talk. 'Players,
strollers, vagabonds,' that is the verdict passed upon us by the
aristocracy and the respectable public, the devil fly away with them!"
"Carlo!" cried Helena.
His eyes flashed. "Am I to take it all quietly when such a stuck-up set
turn me out of doors? Me, Carlo Batti, renowned in Paris, in Berlin, in
St. Petersburg, as well as in Vienna!" he shouted, angrily. "Come, we
can stay here no longer. I must go to Remmingen to look for some horses.
You will drive there with me."
"You said we might stay here, Uncle Carlo!" cried the child. "I want to
see the castle where my Johanna lives. Mamma promised me I should."
Carlo laughed scornfully. "The castle,--yes, you shall see it, if only
the outside," he said. Taking the child to the window, he continued: "Do
you see that ugly old barn up there? They call that the castle, and it
is full of ugly old cats who would eat you up, poor little mouse!"
His joke seemed to restore his good humour. He turned to Johanna and
said, "Drive with us to Remmingen. I am sorry I have not my Mustapha
here; we might have a ride together. But we must content ourselves with
the hack. 'Need drives the devil to eat flies.'"
Johanna hesitated to accept the invitation; but Lisbeth hung upon her
arm and begged so hard, "Come with us, do!" that her sister could not
resist her.
There was no opportunity, however, for any quiet, uninterrupted talk.
While they were driving to Remmingen, Carlo Batti held forth himself;
and when he left them in the inn there while he went to inspect some
horses, Helena fell upon Johanna's neck, exclaiming that she had been
pining for months for this moment,--for the opportunity of unburdening
her heart. And then she wept for her Roderich, and adjured Johanna not
to consider her speedy second marriage as disloyalty to him whom she
'had adored, and never could forget.'
"I was so helpless," she said; "I felt lost in the wide, wide world. You
cannot imagine, dear Johanna, the trials and hostilities to which an
unprotected woman is exposed, particularly when, like myself, she is
young, beautiful, and talented.
"You can have no idea of the intrigues and cabals with which I was
surrounded. The more gracious,--yes, I might as well confess,--the more
enthusiastic my reception was by the public, the more virulent my rivals
became. They took refuge behind the critics, and slandered me to the
public and to the management. Four times I obtained an engagement, and
each time they contrived to have it fail. If we had time, I could tell
you stories that would make your hair stand on end----"
Thus she went on for a long while, and then began upon Carlo Batti. "He
is a wonderful man, and as kind as he is clever. And how he loves me! It
is a perpetual surprise to me, although I ought to be used to adoration.
Nothing seems to him good enough for me; he loads me with gifts. And how
devoted he is to Lisbeth! That was what first decided me to marry him.
It was my duty to insure to the child a home and a father's protection.
Was I not right?"
To avoid a reply, Johanna bent over the little girl who stood beside
her, and her heart ached as she looked into the pale little face.
"Do you think her changed?" asked Helena.
"Very much; she has grown pale and thin. How could you allow such a
frail little creature to appear in public?"
"It did her no harm," Helena declared. "It was a simple little juvenile
ballet, the prettiest thing you can imagine. Ten boys and ten girls in
pink and silver----"
"But I was the prettiest of all," Lisbeth interposed, and her eyes
sparkled; "and I danced the best, too. Everybody clapped their hands,
and Uncle Carlo said that if I would take pains I could be a great
artist, and then I should always have the loveliest clothes, and the
others, who were not so pretty as I, would be half dead with vexation."
Helena laughed. "You see how he turns the child's head," she said; but
it was evident that she was pleased. Johanna reflected with positive
horror that if the child were left with these people, her inborn vanity
would destroy the germs of good in her heart. She must save the little
one from such a fate. Otto would let her have the child at Tannhagen.
Batti returned in an ill humour, because nothing had come of the
purchase of horses, and the bad beer and black bread of the Remmingen
inn were not calculated to soothe his irritation. Helena ought to have
remembered to bring with them a couple of bottles of wine and some cold
meat; but unless he himself attended to everything, great and small,
nothing was ever done. Helena, who could not possibly submit to reproof,
replied crossly that she had not expected to breakfast at a village inn,
whereupon Batti angrily observed that another time she would please to
rely upon his knowledge of the world and of human nature. He had from
the first been averse to the d--d drive, and it was the last time he
should accede to Helena's silly schemes.
"Why the deuce do you want to force yourself upon people who will have
nothing to do with you?" he shouted, striking his clinched fist upon the
table so that the glasses rang again.
Helena exclaimed, in a voice trembling with anger, that she had no idea
of anything of the kind; she had been admired and sought for everywhere.
But Batti did not allow her to proceed; he asked her with a sneer
whether any one of the aristocratic old dandies who had paid court to
her had ever asked her inside his doors or presented her to the women of
his family. Helena, as she always did when she had nothing to reply,
burst into tears, and Lisbeth looked terrified from one to the other.
"You say something, dear Johanna," she whispered to her sister; and
Batti, who overheard her, seemed suddenly to recollect his guest.
"Pardon me," he said, extending his hand to her. "I am a rough fellow,
but I mean no harm. It has been a great pleasure to me to know you, and
I am heartily grateful to my wife for it."
Then he kissed Helena, who dried her tears. The little girl sprang with
a joyous shout into Uncle Carlo's outstretched arms, and the party drove
back to Doenninghausen in peace and harmony.
Here there was a trying leave-taking. When Johanna had the vehicle
stopped upon the bridge, Lisbeth clung about her neck, and would not
release her. Her sister's assurance that she should soon come to
Tannhagen, and her step-father's promise that she should dance in a
white dress with golden stars, were both needed to pacify her. And then
Helena pressed her handkerchief to her tearless eyes, embraced her
step-daughter, and over her shoulder breathed in plaintive accents the
assurance that it was long, long since she had enjoyed anything so much
as seeing her dear, dear Johanna again. Finally Batti, who had sprung
out of the coach to assist her to alight, took her hand in both his.
"Farewell!" he cried, with the expression of child-like good humour
which well became his eager face. "You must not think that I speak words
of mere formality when I say that I am really yours to command. If I can
ever serve you, or assist you in any way, curse me if it will not give
me the greatest pleasure. I pray you to believe me."
"I do believe you, and thank you cordially," she replied, strangely
touched by his words. Had she a presentiment that she might some day
stand in need of his proffered aid? No such thought occurred to her, she
gave one more kiss to the child, who stretched out her arms to her, and
then Batti re-entered the coach, the driver cracked his whip, the crazy
vehicle rattled off, and Johanna gazed after it so long as she could
distinguish the fair, curly head stretched out of the window.