"Hullo! What fails with the well-born and most worthy lady, her to make
in such pitiable plight?" inquired Burgher Jans, poking his little round
face into the parlour of the house in the Gulden Strasse, just as
Lorischen, bending over her mistress, was endeavouring to raise her on
to the sofa, where she would be better enabled to apply restoratives in
order to bring her to.
The old nurse was glad of any assistance in the emergency; and, even the
fat little Burgher, disliked as he was by her, as a rule, with an
inveterate hatred, was better than nobody!
"Madame has fainted," she said. "Help me to lift her up, and I'll be
obliged to you, worshipful Herr."
"Yes, so, right gladly will I do it, dearest maiden," replied Burgher
Jans politely, with his usual sweeping bow, taking off his hat and
depositing it on an adjacent chair, while he lent a hand to raise the
poor lady and place her on the couch.
This done, he espied the letter that had caused the commotion, which
Madame Dort still held tightly clutched in her hand when she fell; and
he tried to pull it away from her rigid fingers. "Ha, what have we
here?" he said.
"You just leave that alone!" snapped out Lorischen. "Pray take yourself
off, with your wanting to spy into other people's business! If I were a
man I'd be ashamed of being so curious, I would. Burgher Jans, I'll
thank you to withdraw; I wish to attend to my mistress."
"I will obey your behests, dearest maiden," blandly replied the little
man, taking his hat from the chair and backing towards the door,
although casting the while most covetous eyes on the mysterious letter,
which he would have cheerfully given a thaler to have been allowed to
peruse. "I will return anon to inquire how the gracious lady is after
her indisposition, and--"
"If you are not out of the room before I count five," exclaimed the old
nurse, angrily interrupting him, "I declare I'll pitch this footstool at
your little round turnip-top of a head, that I will. One--two--three--"
"Why, whatever is the matter, Lorischen?" interposed Madame Dort,
opening her eyes at this juncture, while the old nurse yet stood with
the footstool raised in her uplifted hands facing the door, half in and
half out of which peered the tortoise-shell spectacles of the little fat
burgher. "Who is there?"
The poor lady spoke very faintly, and did not seem to know where she was
at first, her gaze wandering round the room.
Lorischen quickly put down the heavy missile with which she was
threatening Burgher Jans; and he, taking advantage of this suspension of
hostilities, at once advanced again within the apartment, although still
keeping his hand on the door so as to be ready to beat a retreat in a
fresh emergency, should the old nurse attempt to renew the interrupted
fray.
"High, well-born, and most gracious madame," said he obsequiously. "It
is me, only me!"
"Hein!" grunted Lorischen. "A nice `me' it is--a little, inquisitive,
meddlesome morsel of a man!"
"Oh, Meinherr Burgher Jans," said Madame Dort, rising up from the sofa.
"I'm glad to see you; I wanted to ask you something. I--"
Just at that moment she caught sight of the letter she held between her
fingers, when she recollected all at once the news she had received, of
which she had been for the time oblivious.
"Ah, poor Fritz!" she exclaimed, bursting into a fit of weeping. "My
son, my firstborn, I shall never see him more!"
"Why, what have you heard, gracious lady?" said Burgher Jans, abandoning
his refuge by the door, and coming forwards into the centre of the room.
"No bad news, I trust, from the young and well-born Herr?"
"Read," said the widow, extending the letter in her hand towards him;
"read for yourself and see."
His owlish eyes all expanded with delight through the tortoise-shell
spectacles, the fat little man eagerly took hold of the rustling piece
of paper and unfolded it, his hands trembling with nervous anxiety to
know what the missive contained--and which he had been all along burning
with curiosity to find out.
Lorischen actually snorted with indignation.
"There, just see that!" she grumbled through her set teeth, opening and
clenching her fingers together convulsively, as if she would like to
snatch the letter away from him--when, perhaps, she would have expressed
her feelings pretty forcibly in the way of scratches on the Burgher's
beaming face: "there, I wouldn't have let him see it if he had gone down
on his bended knees for it--no, not if I had died first!"
The widow continued to sob in her handkerchief; while the Burgher
appeared to gloat over the delicate angular handwriting of the letter,
as if he were learning it by heart and spelling out every word--he took
so long over it.
"Ah, it is bad, gracious lady," he said at length; "but, still, not so
bad as it might otherwise be."
Madame Dort raised her tear-stained face, looking at the little roan
questioningly; while Lorischen, who in her longing to hear about Fritz
had not quitted the apartment, according to her usual custom when
Burgher Jans was in it, drew nearer, resting her impulsive fingers on
the table, so as not to alarm that worthy unnecessarily and make him
stop speaking.
The Burgher felt himself a person of importance, on account of his
opinion being consulted; so he drew himself up to his full height--just
five feet one inch!
"The letter only says, most worthy and gracious lady,--and you, dearest
maiden," he proceeded--with a special bow to Lorischen, which the
latter, sad to relate, only received with a grimace from her tightly
drawn spinster lips--"that the young and well-born Herr is merely
grievously wounded, and not, thanks be to Providence, that he is--he
is--he is--"
"Why don't you say `dead' at once, and not beat about the bush in that
stupid way?" interposed the old nurse, who detested the little man's
hemming and hawing over matters which she was in the habit of blurting
out roughly without demur.
"No, I like not the ugly word," suavely expostulated the Burgher. "The
great-to-come-for-all-of-us can be better expressed than that! But, to
resume my argument, dearest maiden and most gracious lady, this document
does not state that the dear son of the house has shaken off this mortal
coil entirely as yet."
"I'd like to shake off yours, and you with it!" said Lorischen angrily,
under her breath--"for a word-weaving, pedantic little fool!"
"You mean that there is hope?" asked Madame Dort, looking a bit less
tearful, her grief having nearly exhausted itself.
"Most decidedly, dear lady," said the Burgher. "Does not the letter say
so in plain and very-much-nicely-written characters?"
"But, all such painful communications are generally worded, if the
writers have a tender heart, so as to break bad news as gently as
possible," answered the widow, wishing to have the faint sanguine
suspicion of hope that was stealing over her confirmed by the other's
opinion.
"Just so," said Burgher Jans authoritatively. "You have reason in your
statement; still, dear lady, by what I can gather from this letter, I
should think that the Frau or Fraulein Vogelstein who signs it wishes to
prepare you for the worst, but yet intimates at the same time that there
is room to hope for the best."
"Ah, I'm glad you say so," exclaimed the widow joyfully. "Now I read it
over, I believe the same; but at first, I thought, in my hurried glance
over it, that Fritz was slain, the writer only pretending he was still
alive, in order to prepare me for his loss. He is not dead, thank God!
That is everything; for, whilst there is life, there's hope, eh?"
"Most decidedly, gracious lady," responded the little man with effusion.
"If ever I under the down-pressing weight of despondency lie, so I unto
myself much comfort make by that happy consolation!"
Madame Dort experienced such relief from the cheering aspect in which
the Burgher's explanation had enabled her now to look upon the news of
Fritz's wound, that her natural feelings of hospitality, which had been
dormant for the while, asserted themselves in favour of her timely
visitor, who in spite of his curiosity had certainly done her much good
in banishing all the ill effects of her fainting fit.
"Will you not have a glass of lager, Herr Jans?" said she.
"Mein Gott, yes," promptly returned the little man. "Much talking makes
one dry, and beer is good for the stomach."
"Lorischen, get the Burgher some lager bier," ordered Madame Dort, on
her invitation being accepted, the old nurse proceeding to execute the
command with very ill grace.
"The Lord only knows when he'll leave now, once he starts guzzling beer
in the parlour! That Burgher Jans is getting to be a positive nuisance
to us; and I shall be glad when our poor wounded Fritz comes home, if
only to stop his coming here so frequently--the gossipping little time-
server, with his bowing and scraping and calling me his `dearest
maiden,' indeed--I'd `maiden' him if I had the chance!"
Lorischen was much exasperated, and so she grumbled to herself as she
sallied out of the room.
However, much to her relief, the "fat little man" did not make a long
stay on this occasion, for he took his leave soon after swallowing the
beer. He was anxious to make a round of visits amongst his
acquaintances, to retail the news that Fritz was wounded and lying in a
hospital at Mezieres, near Metz, for he had read it himself in the
letter, you know! He likewise informed his hearers, although he had not
so impressed the widow, that they would probably never see the young
clerk of Herr Grosschnapper again in Lubeck, as his case was so
desperate that he was not expected to live! His story otherwise,
probably, would have been far less interesting to scandal-mongers, as
they would have thus lost the opportunity of settling all the affairs of
the widow and considering whom she would marry again. Of course, they
now decided, that, as she had as good as lost both her sons and had a
nice little property of her own, besides being comparatively not old, so
to speak, and not very plain, she would naturally seek another partner
to console herself in her solitude--Burgher Jans getting much quizzed on
this point, with sly allusions as to his being the widow's best friend!
Some days after Madaleine Vogelstein's first letter, Madame Dort
received a second, telling her that the ball had been extracted from her
son's wound, but fever had come on, making him very weak and prostrate;
although, as his good constitution had enabled him to survive the
painful operation, he would probably pull through this second ordeal.
The widow again grew down-hearted at this intelligence, and it was as
much as Burgher Jans could do, with all his plausibility, to make her
hopeful; while Lorischen, her old superstitious fears and belief in
Mouser's prophetic miaow-wowing again revived, did all her best to
negative the fat little man's praiseworthy efforts at cheering. Ever
since the Burgher had been elected a confidant of Madaleine's original
communication, he had made a point of calling every day in the Gulden
Strasse, with his, to the old nurse, sickening and stereotyped
inquiry--"Any news yet?" until the field post brought the next despatch,
when, as he now naturally expected and wished, the letter was given him
to read.
"He seems bent on hanging up his hat in our lobby here!" Lorischen
would say spitefully, on the widow seeking to excuse the little man's
pertinacity in visiting her. "Much he cares whether poor Master Fritz
gets well or ill; he takes more interest in somebody else, I think!"
"Oh, Lorischen!" Madame Dort would remonstrate. "How can you say such
things?"
"It is `Oh, mistress!' it strikes me," the other would retort. "I wish
the young master were only here!"
"And so do I heartily," said Madame Dort, at the end of one of these
daily skirmishes between the two on the same subject. "We agree on that
point, at all events!" and she sighed heavily. The old servant was so
privileged a person that she did not like to speak harshly to her,
although she did not at all relish Lorischen's frequent allusions as to
the real object of the Burgher's visits, and her surmises as to what the
neighbours would think about them. Madame Dort put up with Lorischen's
innuendoes in silence, but still, she did not look pleased.
"Ach Himmel, dear mistress!" pleaded the offender, "never mind my
waspish old tongue. I am always saying what I shouldn't; but that
little fat man does irritate me with his hypocritical, oily smile and
smooth way--calling me his `dearest maiden,' indeed!"
"Why, don't you see, Lorischen, that it is you really whom he comes here
after, although you treat him so cruelly!" said the widow, smiling.
This was more than the old spinster could bear.
"What, me!" she exclaimed, with withering scorn. "Himmel, if I thought
that, I would soon scratch his chubby face for him--me, indeed!" and she
retreated from the room in high dudgeon.
Bye-and-bye, there came another letter from the now familiar
correspondent, saying that Fritz was really recovering at last; and, oh
what happiness! the mother's heart was rejoiced by the sight of a few
awkwardly scrawled lines at the end. It was a postscript from her son
himself!
The almost indecipherable words were only "Love to Mutterchen, from her
own Fritz," but they were more precious to her than the lengthiest
epistle from any one else.
"Any news?" asked Burgher Jans of Lorischen soon afterwards, when he
came to the house to make his stereotyped inquiry.
"Yes," said the old nurse, instead of replying with her usual negative.
"Indeed!" exclaimed the little man. "The noble, well-born young Herr is
not worse, I hope?" and he tried to hide his abnormally bland expression
with a sympathetic look of deep concern; but he failed miserably in the
attempt. His full-moon face could not help beaming with a self-
satisfied complacency which it was impossible to subdue; indeed, he
would have been unable to disguise this appearance of smiling, even if
he had been at a funeral and was, mentally, plunged in the deepest woe--
if that were possible for him to be!
"No, not worse," answered Lorischen. "He is--"
"Not dead, I trust?" said Burgher Jans, interrupting her before she
could finish her sentence, and using in his hurry the very word to which
he had objected before.
"No, he is not dead," retorted the old nurse, with a triumphant ring in
her voice. "And, if you were expecting that, I only hope you are
disappointed, that's all! He is getting better, for he has written to
the mistress himself; and, what is more, he's coming home to send you to
the right-about, Burgher Jans, and stop your coming here any more. Do
you hear that, eh?"
"My dearest maiden," commenced to stammer out the little fat man,
woefully taken aback by this outburst, "I--I--don't know what you mean."
"Ah, but I do," returned Lorischen, not feeling any the more amiably
disposed towards him by his addressing her in that way after what Madame
Dort had said about his calling especially to see her. "I know what I
mean; and what I mean to say now, is, that my mistress told me to say
she was engaged when you came, should you call to-day, and that she is
unable to see you, there! Good-morning, Burgher Jans; good-morning,
most worshipful Herr!"
So saying, she slammed the door in the poor little man's face, leaving
him without, cogitating the reason for this summary dismissal of him by
the widow; albeit Lorischen, in order to indulge her own feelings of
dislike, had somewhat exaggerated a casual remark made by her mistress--
that she did not wish to be interrupted after the receipt of the good
news about Fritz, as she wanted to answer the letter at once!