DR. NORDSTEDT.
Spring had come, and life in Eichhof had developed into just what
Bernhard had foreseen. He had taken an active part in a new railway
enterprise which was to bring his secluded estates more into contact
with the world and to connect a great Russian branch-line with a German
trunk-line. By degrees he had become a prime mover in this scheme, and
when he returned to Eichhof every moment of his time and every thought
of his mind were put under requisition. He had to go to Russia, and
backwards and forwards to and from Berlin; guests of every social rank
came to Eichhof in the interests of the new railway, a prominent
banking-house had to be induced to join in the scheme, and there were
all kinds of foreseen and unforeseen obstacles to be overcome. And
Bernhard was wanted everywhere. A great work was to be undertaken, one
that would be of immense benefit to his section of the country, and the
less satisfaction Bernhard took in his home-life the more did he devote
himself to these outside interests, that were to be, as he thought, so
productive of good. It was natural that Julutta Wronsky should
understand and sympathize with him in these interests more than Thea
possibly could. The time was past when Thea, for love of him, would
interest herself in subjects that else would never have occupied her
thoughts. And, besides, she was so very far from well that she no
longer refused to heed the advice of the physician, who urged her to
try change of air and scene at one of the well-known baths.
So she made ready for the journey, upon which her little son was to be
her only companion and consolation. Yes, her only consolation, for
except in her boy's laughing eyes she could see no brightness anywhere.
At Schoenthal, Frau von Rosen had been seriously ill, and when she began
to recover her disease settled in her eyes, so that at the end of a few
weeks her sight was almost entirely gone. It was a sad picture, that of
one who had been so active now so entirely helpless, and Herr von Rosen
and Alma vied with each other in devotion to the invalid. Care for her
mother helped Alma to conceal and to overcome her grief for Lothar far
more easily than would otherwise have been the case. She had no time to
think of it,--the present claimed all her powers of mind and body, and
the past retreated into a dim distance. While Thea was preparing for
her journey, her mother was about to travel also; but while Thea's goal
was a mountain watering-place, Frau von Rosen was going to Berlin to
consult Walter's friend, Dr. Nordstedt. He advised her to place herself
entirely under his care for a while, and accordingly Frau von Rosen and
Alma were soon established in two quiet rooms in a wing of the
Nordstedt mansion, the windows of which looked out upon the blossoming
fruit-trees and green grass-plats of the pleasant garden. Soon this
prospect was shut out from one of the rooms by blue curtains, for Frau
von Rosen was to undergo an operation which would decide whether she
should henceforth dwell in perpetual night or once more look upon the
light of day and the faces of those whom she loved. They were weary
days that Alma now passed beside her mother's couch, hovering between
fear and hope. Herr von Rosen left them immediately after the
operation, for pressing business at home prevented him from awaiting
the final decision, and Walter Eichhof and Adela Hohenstein were the
only friends from home who came now and then to ask after Frau von
Rosen and to chat awhile with Alma. Oddly enough, the two had never met
upon any of their visits; 'fortunately,' Walter said, 'unfortunately,'
Adela thought, although not for worlds would she have uttered the word
aloud. At last after days of prolonged anxiety the bandage could be
removed from the invalid's eyes, and Dr. Nordstedt pronounced the
operation entirely successful. That was the first happy day that Alma
had known since Lothar's death. A smile transfigured for a moment Dr.
Nordstedt's grave face as he announced the glad tidings to Alma, and
tears glittered in the girl's eyes as she held out both hands to him,
and, forgetting all her shyness, cried, "Ah, how I thank you, Dr.
Nordstedt! If I only had some way in which to show you how grateful I
am!"
He held her little white hands in a firm clasp for an instant, and
replied, "Such moments are the bright spots in a physician's life,
Fraeulein von Rosen, and they atone for many a gloomy day."
On the evening of that day Alma stood at the open window of her room,
looking out into the starry June night. The leaves of the trees
whispered gently in the evening breeze, and the garden lay silent and
dark below her, while beyond the gardens and court-yard that surrounded
the Nordstedt mansion there was the glimmer of distant gas-lights, and
the street-noises fell upon her ear like a muffled hum. Alma was so
grateful that she longed to be happy and glad, and yet precisely at
this time, when she was relieved from her weight of care and could
breathe freely, she felt doubly lonely in the strange great city. She
seemed to herself to be upon a lonely island in the midst of a roaring
ocean. As she stood thus looking out, she thought of that winter night
in Eichhof when she had stood at the window gazing thus. Lothar's
image, which her recent care had banished to the background of her
thoughts, arose vividly before her, and she was conscious of a painful
yearning for her home. She clasped her hands against the window-frame,
and leaned her head upon them. The air was sultry; she had loosened her
fair hair, and it fell down about her shoulders, as she remained thus
lost in thoughts of the past. Suddenly the door was opened, and a woman
with a lighted candle entered the room. It was the nurse to whose care
Frau von Rosen was specially intrusted.
"Good gracious, Fraeulein dear, you are in pitch darkness!" she
exclaimed, putting the candle on the table, "and with the window open
too! Have you closed the door, that your mother may not feel the
draught?"
"Indeed I have, Marianne," Alma replied, half turning round. "My mother
is asleep, and I came here to get a little fresh air."
"Yes, yes, you ought to have more fresh air, Fraeulein dear; the Herr
Doctor always says you ought to walk in the garden every day. The Herr
Doctor is not at all pleased to see you grow so pale here. He looks at
you,--yes, just as he always does at people with whom he is not
satisfied, and for whom he would like to prescribe. No offence,
Fraeulein, but he does; such a sad look, and yet so kind. Good gracious!
I know the look well enough. And he has, perhaps, a particular reason
for it in your case."
Alma was only lending half an ear to the woman's chatter, and it was
more out of kindness than from interest that she asked, "Indeed? How
so?"
Marianne put on an air of mystery. "Ah, you see, 'tis a long story. You
look like somebody," she replied.
"Indeed?"
"Somebody who is dead; of course it was a woman," Marianne chattered
on. "She had braids just like yours. Now your hair is down, I can see
that she had the very same. And she had blue eyes, too, and was so like
you in some way, I cannot exactly tell how; but as soon as you came you
reminded me of her, and our doctor saw it too,--I knew that in a
moment, for I know him well."
"Well, and who was this other?" Alma asked, with more interest.
Marianne sighed, and then told Alma of the unfortunate young woman whom
her doctor had once intrusted to her care. "And only think, Fraeulein
dear, the woman had once been so rich that she did not know what to do
with her money, and--but this is a secret; I only happen to know it
because my husband, who is dead, was once a footman in her house. Only
since you look so like her I'll tell it to you. Well, our doctor loved
this woman dearly when she was a girl. But he was very young, and the
girl's parents, and the girl herself, perhaps, thought he was not rich
enough for her. At all events, she wouldn't marry him, and that's the
only reason why he has never married, although now he might choose a
wife where he would and thank you, too. But he cannot forget his
Hedwig. And when he found her so sick and miserable, and got me to
nurse her, and then at last when she died, any one could see how
fond he was of her. Our doctor is an angel to all sick people, but
then--then he was something more."
Alma listened now with keen interest, and was almost sorry when
Marianne had finished arranging her room for the night and was obliged
to attend to some other patients.
"Yes, yes, Fraeulein dear, the best of men must have trials. Well,
good-night."
And the nurse left the room, and Alma was again alone at the window.
And so this calm, grave Dr. Nordstedt had also lived through his
romance. He had lost his love, and lost her so cruelly! "Poor man!"
Alma whispered, thinking of what she had just heard. Then she heard
footsteps on the garden gravel path below her window. She leaned out,
and saw a tall, manly figure slowly walking towards the house. She
hurriedly withdrew, as though fearing that the doctor might suspect
that she was thinking of him and that she knew his secret. Still, she
no longer felt lonely as before; it was a certain consolation to her to
reflect that in the heart of the man walking alone beneath the trees on
this sultry evening there might perhaps be thoughts similar to her own.
From this day it was not gratitude solely that prompted her to observe
the doctor with greater interest than hitherto. There seemed a certain
resemblance between his fate and her own. She thought she could
understand him; and when he paced the garden to and fro alone in the
evening, and she stood alone at her window, she thought that surely
there was some mysterious sympathy between them.
Thus some time passed, and at last Frau von Rosen was allowed to leave
her room. When she spent an hour for the first time in an arbour in the
garden, Herr von Hohenstein and his daughter came to wish their old
friend joy in her restoration to health, and to inform her at the same
time that Herr von Hohenstein had purchased a country-house with a
little land, and that they were to occupy it the ensuing week. The
house was in the vicinity of one of the larger cities of their native
province, and Adela was enthusiastic in her praises of its lovely
situation, while her head was filled with plans for gardens of roses,
asparagus-beds, dove-cotes, and chicken-yards. Herr von Hohenstein, who
had entirely recovered his health, although he was greatly changed and
found his memory often defective, so that he was obliged to turn to
Adela for aid, agreed to everything, and spoke of employing his leisure
in the quiet of the country, if his strength admitted of it, in
collecting his varied experience on the subject of the breeding of
horses, and in publishing it for the use and enlightenment of
posterity. Adela had taken a pencil out of her pocket, and was
just about to draw a ground-plan of her future home on a leaf of
her note-book for Alma, when a shadow fell upon her paper, and a
familiar voice that had not fallen upon her ears for a long time bade
'good-morning' to the little circle in the arbour. Adela started up and
confronted Walter Eichhof. Perhaps each was at first inclined, so
unexpected was this meeting, to run away; but Adela was imprisoned in
the arbour, and Dr. Nordstedt's broad shoulders appeared just behind
Walter. As there was no way of avoiding each other, they each had
recourse to the same line of conduct; Walter devoted himself to the
Rosens, and Adela found inexhaustible matter for conversation with Dr.
Nordstedt in his establishment and his methods of treatment, in which
she expressed the greatest interest. Both Walter and Adela, however,
took occasion to scan each other furtively, and at times replied rather
vaguely to remarks addressed to them, from an anxiety on the part of
each to hear what the other was saying. At last Dr. Nordstedt expressed
a fear lest so much conversation around her might fatigue Frau von
Rosen, and proposed that she should be left for a while with the Baron
von Hohenstein, while he conducted Walter and the young ladies through
the garden, and the establishment in which Fraeulein von Hohenstein
expressed such an interest.
Adela immediately declared herself ready to go, and, as Walter was
standing by Alma's side, it fell to Dr. Nordstedt to conduct Fraeulein
von Hohenstein. He showed them through various rooms in the house, and
told them how they had been enlarged to their present size from small
beginnings, until he had ended by adding the present spacious wings to
the original mansion. The waiting-rooms were filled with all kinds of
costly _objets d'art_, mementos from grateful patients from near and
far. Adela, who had chattered fast enough at first, gradually became
silent, and looked up with a kind of awe at the tall, serious man who
had made himself what he was. Then she cast a stolen glance at Walter.
He was right to be proud of this friend, she thought, and then she
wondered whether Walter possessed sufficient energy and industry to be
like him. She could not but observe meanwhile that in the course of the
last year Walter had grown far more manly, and at last she arrived at
the conclusion that she never should suspect either Walter or Dr.
Nordstedt of being doctors if she had not known about them. The image
of a 'doctor' in her mind was inseparably connected with a large pair
of spectacles and a strong odour of ether,--both attributes of the
family physician at Rollin, and of a certain professor who had been
called in at the time of her father's illness. They had hitherto been
the only representatives of the medical profession known to her.
"Fraeulein Alma would like to see your study," Walter suddenly said to
Nordstedt, who turned to the girl with a smile, and said,--
"You have seen it already, Fraeulein von Rosen. It is the little room I
showed you where I performed my first successful operation. When one
wishes to work, any decoration around one has a disturbing influence, I
think; and then, too, I like old places, and so I stayed there with my
books."
"For the first time I cannot agree with you," cried Adela. "Whoever has
any taste for the beautiful must like to see it around him."
Nordstedt laughed. "You are right," he rejoined; "but beauty incites me
either to enjoyment or to dreamy revery, and neither is any assistance
to hard work."
"But, lest the ladies should think you a scorner of the beautiful, you
must open your music-room for us," said Walter.
This Nordstedt did with pleasure. He certainly was much more talkative
and less reserved than usual to-day. Walter wondered whether Adela's
gay humour had wrought this change. Although he was firmly convinced
that he himself had entirely ceased to think of Adela, he found this
suspicion far from agreeable.
As they entered the music-room both the girls uttered an exclamation of
delight. The furniture, the hangings, the pictures on the walls, all
gave evidence of genuine taste and a fine artistic perception.
"Yes, the requirements of art differ from those of labour," said
Nordstedt. "Art gives beauty and must have beauty."
And everything in this room was beautiful. From the grand piano to the
smallest footstool, all was perfect of its kind. Adela's admiration was
loudly expressed, Alma's was silent. But whenever she lifted her eyes
they were sure to encounter Nordstedt's glance seeking hers. "Do you
love music?" he asked, suddenly stepping to her side.
"Dearly!" she replied.
He went to the piano, and played one of Mendelssohn's Songs without
Words. Walter stood at a window, looking very grave. Nordstedt never
played before strangers. What had come over him to-day? And how
devoutly Adela was listening! Walter wished he had not come here
to-day, and the brighter his friend's face grew the gloomier he felt.
The song that Nordstedt had chosen was one of those brief melancholy
strains that suggest a lament. When he had finished, Alma said, "That
song is one of my favourites. It is so fervent, and yet so sad. It
sounds as if one were thinking of some one loved and lost----"
Nordstedt turned upon her one brief questioning glance of surprise.
Alma blushed, fearing that she had said too much. But Adela, who
generally said whatever came into her head without reflecting,
exclaimed, as she looked admiringly at Nordstedt, "Why, you can do
everything! You give me an entirely different idea of doctors from any
I have ever had before!"
Scarcely had the words left her lips when she, too, blushed crimson to
the roots of her hair, for she remembered that Walter heard what she
said. She was glad that Nordstedt proposed returning to Frau von Rosen,
who ought now to be taken to her room. Without waiting for the escort
of the two gentlemen, she took Alma's arm, and ran, rather than walked,
along the corridor into the garden, while the young men silently
followed them. Nordstedt's face was bright with a smile, but Walter was
annoyed and discontented with himself, with Adela, with everybody. He
was more startled than pleased when Adela offered him her hand at
parting and said, softly, "It has given me great pleasure to see you
again." He replied only by a low, formal bow. He wandered about the
loneliest streets on this evening until ten o'clock, and at last closed
his door behind him and threw himself upon his lounge, saying, "And yet
I wish I had not seen her again!"