THE LION AND THE MOUSE.
ON the following evening, Sara, when she arrived at the Wilhelmis’,
found a large, gay party assembled, consisting chiefly of those who
had distinguished themselves in the _lebenden_ _Bildern_ the night
before, or who had given useful service in preparing them. Sara was
almost shocked to recognise, amongst others, little Frau Goldmark,
for whose benefit the entertainment had been given. To her intense
nature it appeared strange and even indecorous that the young widow
should present herself in this sparkling mixed company—under the
circumstances. Certainly she did not put herself forward; she sat on
an ottoman, in a rather retired corner, from which she did not move,
and those who desired to have speech of her could do so by going and
talking to her. Sara found herself near her during the evening, and,
at the moment, no one else was close to them. She turned and spoke to
her, wishing her good-evening rather gravely. Indeed, since yesterday
afternoon, she had felt grave, though by no means sad. She had
reflected upon Falkenberg’s strictures, and the more she thought upon
the subject the more convinced she was that he had spoken the words of
justice—of truth and soberness.
‘Ah, Miss Ford!’ exclaimed Frau Goldmark, effusively, ‘how very much I
have to thank you for!’
‘Do not mention it, Frau Goldmark. What little I could do, I did with
great pleasure; and I am very glad if it succeeded.’
‘_Ach, ungeheuer!_’ cried she, using an exaggerated expression not
beloved of Sara, who wondered more and more that the little woman had
not had the sense to remain at home—‘_Ungeheuer!_ it will be a small
fortune to me. It is entirely your influence, of course, _liebes
Fräulein_, which has induced Herr Falkenberg to be so generous. And I,
who had been thinking that the picture was only so much buried capital,
that never would be realised!’
‘I am afraid I don’t understand you,’ said Sara, becoming conscious
that some event of which she knew nothing was alluded to, and aware,
too, of a disagreeably significant meaning in the smile with which Frau
Goldmark looked at her.
‘But you must know surely that, yesterday morning, Herr Falkenberg went
straight to the _Ausstellung_, where my husband’s picture hung, and
that he bought it—bought it then and there; and when Herr Lohe of the
_Ausstellung_ said that it was a fine picture, Herr Falkenberg replied
that to anyone who had seen Miss Ford in that character the night
before, it could not fail to be a fine picture. Now, what do you think?’
Frau Goldmark laughed, never having imagined that she would have the
good fortune to be the first to communicate this news to Miss Ford. The
reply surprised and appalled her.
‘I think your information most uncalled for, and that, if true, it is
not of the slightest importance to me,’ replied the young lady, raising
her head to its utmost height, and, without deigning another word,
walking away.
Frau Goldmark recoiled. She had imagined that the information would be
considered most piquant and gratifying, and behold, the result had been
annihilation almost.
Though Sara had walked away with such dignity, a most unpleasant
sensation had taken possession of her. It was most unlike all she knew
of Falkenberg that he should make such a vulgar remark as that would
certainly have been; and yet the glibness with which Frau Goldmark had
repeated it, staggered her. She stood, absently conversing with Ludwig
Maas, the very man with whom she had acted in the picture, and was
chiefly conscious of repenting bitterly that she had ever taken any
part in the affair, and Herr Maas was wondering a little why Miss Ford,
who, with all her dignity, had been so sociable and pleasant to him two
days ago, should wear so cold and unapproachable an expression this
evening, when Falkenberg came up to them.
‘Miss Ford,’ said he, ‘I have been talking to Frau Goldmark.’
‘Indeed!’ was the frigid reply.
‘I had better go,’ decided Ludwig within himself; and with a murmured
excuse he left them.
‘Yes,’ pursued Rudolf. ‘I saw that she had offended you by something
she had said. She is a tiresome, vulgar little woman, who used to
annoy me a good deal in former days when I had dealings with her
husband.’
‘I can quite imagine it,’ said Sara, ‘but as I feel quite indifferent
towards her, we need not talk about her.’
There was a laugh in Falkenberg’s eyes as he said:
‘But I do not feel at all indifferent towards her, finding as I do,
that she has been misrepresenting me to you.’
Sara’s face flushed, and her head was lifted again.
‘Pray let us leave the subject,’ she said.
‘No, I must ask you as a favour to hear me. Frau Goldmark has a way of
putting the cart before the horse sometimes, which, if innocent, is
still annoying. She told you that _I_ had said to Herr Lohe—something
which, if I had said it, under the circumstances, would have been the
height of impertinence, though the poor little woman seems to imagine
that it was a charming compliment.’
‘Well, and did you not say it?’ she asked, still in the same
unapproachable manner.
‘Can you for a moment suspect me of it? I observed to Herr Lohe that it
was a charming picture, upon which he threw up his hands, exclaiming,
“_Ach! mein Herr_, it was always charming, but since one has seen Miss
Ford in it, it is _à ravir_.”’
Sara smiled involuntarily. Herr Lohe was a well-known character in the
Elberthal artist world. The words and the manner were so exactly his,
that she could no longer have even a shade of doubt on the matter.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, all the stiffness melting suddenly from
her attitude and expression, ‘for ever listening to such a story. It
took me by surprise.’
‘Now you look less terrible, and more human,’ he said, laughing; ‘less
like those “snows so pure, those peaks so high,” to which the poet said
he lifted “a hopeless eye.”’
‘You are laughing at me,’ said Sara, laughing in her turn. ‘I felt
insulted, I confess. What a tiresome, mischievous little woman that is!’
‘Very. But,’ he added earnestly, and in a low voice, ‘you were not
insulted yesterday, when I said some rather strong things to you, the
reverse of complimentary, and yet now——’
‘That was quite different,’ she replied, her cheek flushing again. ‘And
you know it, Herr Falkenberg; but you wish to torment me because you
think I am exaggerated in everything.’
‘Since that is your opinion of my opinion of you, let it stand,’ was
all he would reply.
Frau Goldmark sat in her corner, and watched the proceedings from afar.
After having been made so much of for so long, this was a grievous
way in which to be treated. Her feelings were assuredly akin to those
expressed by the oysters when the walrus and the carpenter threatened
to eat them.
‘After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do.’
‘_Lieber Himmel!_’ thought Frau Goldmark, who was accustomed, even
mentally, to the use of exaggerated expressions, ‘how could I know?
But who does know what will please an Englishwoman? Not I, I am sure.
I wish I had given her back her stare, but I never have my wits about
me at the right moment, and I dare say she thought I was overwhelmed
with confusion. And when he came up to me’—here an expression akin to
cunning developed itself upon Frau Goldmark’s face—‘these men think
they have but to speak, and that then we believe them. He “thought I
had made a mistake,” indeed. Whether I may have been mistaken about
that or not, can I not see him now, talking to her, and the look in
his eyes? Bah! it is easy enough to see what it all means. People
like her think they have a right to toss their heads if one hazards a
joke. Would not she be glad enough to catch him, if she could? And
if she does, will it not be through me that they have been brought
together—their happiness made out of my misfortune? _Ach, ja!_’
Which leads one to reflect that there is a celebrated fable concerning
a lion and a mouse, which relates how the former magnanimously thanked
the latter on being set free from his toils through that humble
agency—leads one also to wonder a little what some mice might feel
supposing they had received favours of crushing importance from the
kingly beast, and had later been rebuked for flippancy of behaviour.
Perhaps the feelings of the mouse on such an occasion might not be
altogether without resemblance to those just now entertained by Frau
Goldmark towards her two most substantial benefactors.
Late the following evening, Falkenberg was pacing up and down the space
jutting out from the Hofgarten towards the river, and known as the
Schöne Aussicht. (Schöne Aussicht—Belle Vue—Bella Vista: why have we
no name for it in England, we who have so much of the thing itself?) It
was the very hour which Sara had mentioned as being her favourite one
for strolling about. Had Falkenberg had any idea of meeting her there?
Hardly. He was scarcely the man to go with such a purpose, especially
in the case of Sara Ford. He had come, partly because he wished to be
alone, and partly because she had said she loved the place. So much he
confessed to himself; nor did it disturb him in that he knew it was a
dream that he cherished.
He was thinking about her now as he paced about, thinking of what she
had said about loving to watch the river, the Rhine. Falkenberg watched
it too, as it flowed majestically along, eleven hundred feet across,
from one low flat bank to the other, making a low, sedate music as
he seemed to march by, with his grand, broad, unintermittent sweep,
having gathered in might and volume during his long journey past
castle and crag and town, between the walls of Mainz and beneath the
frowning escarpments of Ehrenbreitstein, between rock and vineyard and
village and hamlet, until he came to proud Cologne, the fairest gem in
his crown, and then, broader and stronger and older and greyer, went
sweeping on past the other villages and towns, towards Rotterdam and
Holland and the sea.
Rudolf saw not another human creature. He ceased his walk, and placed
himself on one of the benches looking towards the river, and, leaning
his elbow on the back of it, smoked, and abstractedly watched a
great American Rhine steamer, with _Kaiser Wilhelm_ inscribed on her
paddle-box, which was steaming slowly into the harbour to stay there
and be repaired before the next tourist season began. The lights on her
poop and deck cast bright rays athwart the sullen grey of the stream,
but he did not see them though he was looking at them.
‘I wish she was not engaged to this fellow,’ he thought. ‘It’s young
Wellfield, I suppose, unless I was very much deceived by what I saw
at Trockenau that night. I may do him injustice, but I have an idea
that when all comes to the point, he will look first to his precious
self. It is not surprising if he is both vain and selfish, after the
ordeal he has gone through of flattery and gratuitous love affairs and
desperate cases, and girls who have made fools of themselves about
him. But it is a pity that at last a noble woman should have fallen a
victim. God forgive me if I do the lad injustice. I hope I do. One can
but wait the event.’
He knocked the ash from his cigar, and gazed across the river at the
outline, now very dim, of a battered-looking tree on the opposite shore.
‘It is time I came to some conclusion,’ he thought. ‘I have been
dangling here long enough. I have her friendship—I see and know that
her love is given elsewhere. It would be simple madness in me to try
to win it. I am only burning my fingers and making a fool of myself by
remaining here—and getting more in love with her every day.... Ay, and
I do love her!’
He flung his cigar away, and leaned forward, gazing intently out into
the darkness, thinking.
‘If ever I had the chance of marrying her—if by any means I could
induce her to take me, I would do it, let the risk be what it might....
Shall I stay a little longer? Is the pleasure worth the concomitant
pain? When I know that I may not tell her I love her, any more than
she, if she loved me, could tell me so.’
As he thus reflected, and reflected, too, that it was all a
chance—everything was a chance—he watched how two men on the big
steamer threw out a rope to two men in a little boat which was rocking
in the swell in the wake of the big one. Twice they threw, and missed;
then prepared to cast it out a third time.
‘If they catch it this time,’ decided Rudolf, ‘I’ll stay; if they miss
again, I’ll say good-bye to her to-morrow, and go home.’
A third throw of the rope, a lurch of the little boat, and the cry:
‘_Gut! Jetzt hab’ ich’s._’
‘I stay. _Gut!_ I take my holiday in Elberthal instead of in Rome. What
does it matter to anyone but myself?’
He arose, and walked straight back to Wilhelmi’s house, where there
was, as usual, a large company, many of whom had been invited expressly
to meet him. He went amongst them, and made himself agreeable to them
for the rest of the evening. He promised himself a month’s holiday
from now. The chances were—for something happening to Sara, to Jerome,
to anyone, which should lead events in the direction he desired—one.
Against that, ten thousand. And for the sake of the one he stayed.
[Illustration]