All poems occur as DIV0. Sonnets are attributed as
"type=sonnets"; the rest are "type=poem". All quotation marks, hyphens, dashes, apostrophes
and colons have been transcribed as entity references. All <lg> (line groups) are attributed
as cantos, stanzas, couplets, verse paragraphs, etc. All poems with regularly
indented lines use the attribute "rend" in the <l> tag, with the value "indent1" for one tab
stop, "indent2" for two tab stops, etc. All split lines are attributed as "type=i" for the initial
portion, and "type=f" for the final portion.
All apostrophes and single right quotation marks are encoded as ’.
Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed; all hyphens are encoded as
‐ and em dashes as —.
BY
innocent delight with which you inspire us? And what adds such a gracious charm to this pleasure is the reflection that the whole world is made an equally welcome guest to the inexhaustible feast thus spread out on the green gladsome earth. Spring, in its way, is as great a leveller as death. The poor, the aged, the unhappy are in its sight as worthy to be caressed by the youngest sunbeam, by the most fragrant of breezes, as their more favoured fellow-creatures.
It is to the former, indeed, O Spring, that is reserved
the subtlest enchantment of thy smiles. For the happy
can never experience to the full the healing strength
which resides in thy influence. It is to the lonely,
the weak, the unfortunate, those whom man in his
reckless search after power and pleasure has roughly
thrust from his path, to whom alone is revealed that
ineffable tenderness which thy sunshine manifests to
the sprouting green leaves and the frail flowers of the
youngling year. No; they know not the infinite sweetness
of thy balmy breath, O spring, who have never
arisen out of grief as from the dark vault of a sepulchre,
and, with the dews of anguish yet fresh on their brow,
seen the gleam of the April sun athwart the thaw of
falling tears. With how shy, and tremulous, and fearful
a joy, lest even in the apprehension it fade, do they
humbly acknowledge that even for them a glory yet
shines in the fugitive hours, and a hope is blown from
the peaks of the morning. They and joy then meet
like dear friends who parting in anger have long dwelt
apart and now, at the moment of final reconciliation,
hang back a little with half-averted eyes ere with a
low cry they fall into each other's arms.
Yes! there was no doubt about it, spring had come
at last. Even D----, that most sleepy of South German
towns, shook off its lethargy and became on a sudden
preternaturally alive with light and laughter. For in
upon every street shone and nodded the vine-clad hills,
their aërial azure fading away into that of the sky;
the music of running waters, so long congealed in the
fountains, filled the public place once more with a
murmur, sounding like an accompaniment to the blithe
chatter of girls where they stood leisurely filling their
pitchers with the sparkling water; birds flitted from
roof to roof, chirping and twittering till the very
atmosphere seemed to transform itself into song; and
high above the roofs, higher than any bird's flight, soared
the luminous white clouds whose shadows fled dreamlike
across the surface of the enfolding hills.
It is in the great sunlit market-place, however, that
the life of the town converges; a gay, multicoloured
scene, of which the ancient Minster, with its great
grave masses cowing the sunshine where it falls, forms
the background; in and out among the tapering minor
spires flit grey, pink-eyed pigeons, settling every now
and then on the projections of the quaintly-carved
capitals; while little dæmons, grinning from gargoyles
and window bosses, appear to be making fantastic grimaces
at the crowd eagerly buying and selling below.
Judging from these impressive preparations, whatever
else might move at a sluggish pace in the worthy
citizens' organisms, their digestive apparatus was anything
but sluggish, and almost seemed to have achieved
the desideratum of perpetual motion.
What with the chaffering, chattering, cheapening of
maids, matrons, and market-women, the cackling of geese, grunting of pigs, and crowing of cocks, the rumbling of carts, and the protracted shrillness of infants' cries placed in undignified positions by excited mammas, while engaged in hotly-contested bargains, the confusion of tongues equalled that of a Babel in miniature. The most trifling purchase was seemingly a feat not to be attempted without the exercise of superior tactics. For a cook of the highest grade goes to market with a sense of responsibility but little inferior to that of a general on the eve of a battle. And, after carefully-planned attacks, sham retreats, delicately-executed skirmishes, and final onslaught, how triumphant is the homeward march of the conquering heroine, attended by the cackling, hissing, and squealing of her captured booty!
Instead of so important a personage, however, let us
rather follow the respectable housewife; Frau Lichtenfeld,
who, engaged in voluble talk with her gossip Frau
Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengärtner, makes her way
homewards on this April morning of the year 1846.
After parting from her companion, the first named lady
still proceeds along the Silberstrasse the main thoroughfare
of D----, till she reaches the last house of the
town, standing by itself in a garden some paces back
from the high road, which here assumed quite a rural
character.
It was a spreading house with high grey roof, and
windows on each side of the door; its gay green
shutters, harmonizing with the cream-coloured walls,
were either shut, or fastened back by revolving iron
clamps. At its back stretched a long grassy garden,
left to grow much at its own sweet will, and interspersed with fruit-trees, now covered with buds that seemed on tiptoe to burst into blossom.
Just as the middle-aged woman enters at the front
door, a young girl standing at the end of this garden is
trying with all her might to unlatch the bolt of the
lumbering old garden gate, grown rusty during the long
disuse of winter.
Before she has succeeded, however, in thrusting back
the bolt, a tiny child issues from the house, and darts
at full speed down the garden, its golden confusion of
hair gleaming above the grass like a living sunflower.
"Mina, Mina," it calls out in childish treble, "you
have forgotten the jar for the honey, and mother's just
back from market and coming after you!"
"Mina, Mina, you have forgotten the jar for the
honey!" calls out in harsher tones of remonstrance
Frau Professorinn Lichtenfeld, coming excitedly along
the path, and flourishing the article in question to and
fro. "I declare," she goes on, "little Lulu here,
though she's but three years old, God bless her, will
soon be the more sensible of the two; but then, she's
not 'a Hans gape i' the air!'"
With these words she puts the jar in the girl's
basket, and undoing the gate for her slightly pushes
her forth. She has scarcely shut the gate, however,
before she shouts after the retreating figure: "Whatever
you do, Mina, remember your grandmother's
rheumatic cordial."
Whether Mina heard this exhortation is doubtful,
as in her eagerness to see her grandmother she was
already many steps on her way. Nor did she in any
marked degree relax her speed till, towards noon, she reached a diminutive house situated on the slope of one of the lower of that range of hills which encircled the town.
This cot, standing in its own vineyard, and partly
hidden by a row of enormous beehives, was the home
of Mina's grandmother. Here the happiest hours of
her childhood had been passed, and it seemed but
yesterday she had fancied it to be a half-way house
to heaven. Why, had she not actually once believed
the story that the sunflowers blazing in a row there
were baby suns put out to nurse, till they should be
in a fit condition for their heavenly duties, and taken
it into her head that the swarms of bees were truant
stars who had run away from their celestial tasks to
make love to the flowers of earth?
After several ineffectual raps, the door was at length
opened by a wizened yet hale old woman, whose
shrunken countenance disappeared behind the voluminous
starched frills of a huge mob-cap. At sight of
her favourite grandchild, her still bright eyes blinked
with joy athwart their environment of countless
wrinkles.
"Grandmother," cried Mina, raising her voice to its
highest pitch, "mother and Lulu and all the boys have
sent more love than I found it possible to carry up the
hill. And mother sends you a fresh supply of her cordial
for rheumatism, which is stronger than usual, she says.
Hans and Conrad asked me to bring you this fish which
they caught yesterday." (A perch about the length of
a finger, looking very dead, in a cabbage leaf.) "And
Hans begs you will keep all caterpillars with crimson
spots on a flesh-coloured ground with the leaves they feed on till he can come for them in his holidays; while Conrad entreats you will not forget that it is his turn to climb the big cherry tree. Lulu tore herself from this best beloved of dolls because she says you will find her such good company in bed." (That the doll had lost its hair and one arm possibly enhanced the sacrifice.) "And, let me see--dear me--I have quite forgotten the messages of the other boys," broke off Mina, with her peculiar silvery little laugh; then added, in a sweet, deprecating way, "And I, granny, have brought you nothing--nothing at all."
"You have brought me yourself, little love--by far
the best message and medicine of all," retorted the old
lady, with the sort of expression one has when inhaling
the fragrance of a fresh-gathered bunch of roses. "But
here I stand chattering," she exclaimed, "quite forgetting
that my pet has had a long, fatiguing walk already, and
must be quite tired by this time."
Therewith, the good old dame began bustling about
the room, attended in all her comings and goings by a
dilapidated raven, who although purblind and lame of
one foot, hopped behind her with the grave dignity of a
mute at a funeral. By degrees she now extracted from
a variety of cupboards, deftly hidden in the walls, a
number of delicacies, which, with the help of Mina,
were soon spread out on the snow-white tablecloth.
Grandmother and grandchild sat down cosily to a meal
of brown bread and butter, honey, preserved fruit, and a
big jug brimful of cream (the former chiefly enjoying
it by proxy, one could see); the raven, who formed part
of the company, being treated with respectful awe by
Mina, and regaled now and then with choicest titbits, which he persisted in carrying off and hiding in dark nooks, where he thought himself safe from observation.
When the simple feast was over Mina, from long
habit, drew a footstool close to her grandmother's
brown leather easy-chair, and with her toes curled up
and her chin propped between her hands, said, in a
coaxing voice, "Granny, now tell us all about the
past."
This old, old woman, whose hair was white as with
the snow of eighty winters, had been young once like
herself and been fallen in love with! What an
inexhaustible romance to this young girl, who had only
twice in her life peeped furtively into a real downright
novel! Nothing loth her grandmother began from her
copious stock of experience, industriously plying her
knitting-needles the while, and Mina, listening open-eyed,
said never a word till, abruptly rising from her
seat, she exclaimed that she had outstayed her time.
The old woman now filled Mina's jar with her finest
honey, adding many injunctions to be careful, it being
the last of the kind which she possessed.
She remained standing in the doorway watching the
receding figure of her grandchild till a sunlit April
shower drove her indoors. But Mina, as she danced
rather than walked down the hill, listened with delight
to the patter of the big bright raindrops, with which
the sun, as if in play, pelted the earth, laughing all the
while in the face of the storm; presently the valley, in
which lay the white houses of the town, was spanned
from hill to hill by a mighty rainbow, while under it,
across a ridge on which it dipped, a flock of sheep defiled slowly one by one, thrown off in bright relief from the green, rain-sparkling slope.
The girl's road this time took her through a small
wood, in which the vegetation had just attained that
stage when the trees, some still bare, others just
budding and blossoming, others again already covered
with delicate foliage, resemble more nearly a green
glimmering exhalation which a breath of air may dispel
than an actually enduring growth of earth. This effect
was still further enhanced at present by that hazy
bloom peculiar to afternoons in spring, and which now
seemed to invest the entire scene in some diviner medium
than that of our common atmosphere. No wonder Mina
lingered lovingly at every step she took, for was it not
April within as well as around her, and did she not feel
as though suddenly roused from long unconscious
slumbers to the infinite beauty and mystery of the
world? In the hidden recesses of her heart was a
stir and flutter as if there also sweet, shy things were
gradually unfolding themselves, so that for the first
time she had a dim apprehension of the profound
affinity of nature around and within her.
But this dreamy mood was soon dispelled by childish
glee, when at a curve in the path she came upon a dell
where violets literally seemed to gush from the sod, till
she fancied she heard them whispering in the breeze,
"Please gather us, gather us!" and what could a
kind-hearted damsel do after that but go down on her knees,
pluck them by handfuls, and knot them together in a
big, fragrant bunch?
She had scarcely achieved this to her satisfaction when
her attention was caught by a butterfly which, floating past her, settled on a flower about a stone's-throw off, spreading out its glowing wings as though to challenge her admiration. The young girl stood quite still, scarcely venturing to breathe lest she should startle this etherial creature. Then recollecting how joyfully her brother would welcome so beautiful a specimen to his collection, she softly untied the strings of her broad-brimmed hat, and gliding forward on tiptoe, brought it suddenly down on the flower on which the butterfly had alighted. She was too late, however, for, like a winged flower driven from its stem, the latter hovered for some time in front of her, then settled on the trunk of a tree, but flew off as she approached.
Thus in hot but fruitless pursuit Mina continued to
run on, till she found herself all at once on the brink
of a pool in whose crystalline depths the wood was
mirroring itself like a youthful beauty smiling at
herself in the looking-glass. So magical, indeed, was
the aspect of this canopy of trees, with their soft, ruddy
tassels and bright, almost golden, leaves, and its transfigured
reflection below, that for the moment she forgot
the object of her chase, and when she again looked
round it had vanished!
Hot and breathless as she was, the girl threw herself
on a low green bank shelving down to the water's edge,
and with her roughened curly head pillowed on a cluster
of hyacinths, she soon fell sound asleep. And in her
sleep she dreamed that she was still pursuing the
butterfly she had so ardently longed to capture. Only
that now it was much larger, more mysteriously beautiful,
and that its shifting tints, scintillating with a lustre
as of precious stones, faded ever and anon to a silvery pallor, which flashed as suddenly into renewed brilliancy, and revealed letters, words, and fiery signs covering its broad wings and crossing them in all directions, which as they caught the maiden's eye kindled a still keener desire for its possession. She had a haunting sense, indeed, that the happiness of her own life, nay, that more potent issues, depended on her success in this chase, and on her unriddling the bright but evanescent hieroglyphs which so whetted her curiosity.
But ever as she thought she had seized the prize--behold
it was but idle air, while the luminous wings
now twinkling aloft, afar, shone out fair but inaccessible
as the midnight stars. Nothing daunted, however, she
ran on and on, and as she ran, the fantastic branches
of twilight trees seemed catching at her garments, as
though to hold her back, or lifting lean, tremulous
fingers to warn her from her mad pursuit. Then,
before she was aware, she had strayed into a lovely dell,
white with innumerable lilies, and, poised on the fairest,
with its wonderful wings outspread, behold the butterfly!
She stretched out her hand, heaved a sigh of expectancy,
and almost tremblingly tightened the clasp of her fingers,
but uttered a loud scream on her hand being stung,
finding to her horror that instead of the dainty insect
she had got hold of a big venomous spider. In her
effort to shake it off she awoke with a confused sense
of hearing her own cry echoed by the solitude around.
Who has not experienced the bewildering sensation
of being abruptly awakened from a vivid dream, in
which actual sense impressions have become inwoven
with the fantastic images of the brain till it seems for
the moment almost imposssible to disentangle the two? This was Mina's case. She looked around confusedly, still faintly shivering with her dream, when she beheld the cause of the noise in two boys who were violently battering and pommelling each other on a small grass plot behind her. The roughest and biggest was holding the lesser one by the back of his waistband and administering a perfect battery of blows here, there, and everywhere. But the advantage was not entirely on his side; for the smaller lad had clutched him by his fierce red hair, standing all on end, and as if on fire with the fury of the combat. Moreover, his head being perforce in a depressed condition, he had converted it into a battering-ram, with which he violently assailed his oppressor between the ribs, to the extreme detriment of his wind. So their chances stood pretty even, and cries and blows redoubled with the difficulty of victory. But what puzzled Mina, who was anxiously looking on, was to see a bird fluttering in strange proximity to the heads of the angry boys, and now and again uttering a low, piteous cry instinct with fear and pain. As she approached, however, the reason became clear.
Close to the lads, almost in danger of being crushed
by their heels, lay a nest with five callow heads showing
above the edge. Nothing more soft, more helpless,
more pitiable than those mute, half-open beaks and
half-shut eyes, scarcely weaned as yet from the warm
darkness of the maternal wings. And how deeply the
parent bird felt this utter nakedness of theirs! How she
yearned over them! how fiercely her little heart throbbed
against her side, till it seemed as though every downy
feather vibrated on her body! It was truly a touching sight, this female bird hovering over her young, dimly comprehending their peril; yet how lost on these savage young natures only intent on wresting the spoil from each other!
Mina had come close up to the boys, and was now
entreating them to restore the nest to the place whence
they had taken it. But seeing that her words had no
effect, she hastily fumbled in her pockets for a few
stray coins. As usual, alas! they were bare of any.
While she was turning her pockets inside out, and
littering the grass with a queer assortment of odds and
ends, the lads left off battering each other for a moment
to stare at her, half stupidly and half cunningly. But
one of them crying out, "I found it, 'tis mine, you
rogue;" the other shouted, "I'm the strongest, and
I'll keep it;" and so they fell to more violently than
before.
A brilliant idea now occurred to Mina. She remembered
her jar of honey. Taking it from her basket, all
aglow with her eagerness, she held it out to the boys,
who, nothing loth, snatched it from her dimpled hands.
This scene had not been unobserved, however; and
now from behind one of the tree-trunks a stranger
advanced, and with a faint smile lurking in the corners
of his mouth, threw some silver to the boys, bidding
them run as fast as their legs would let them; which
they did accordingly, honey and all. Then stooping, he
gently lifted the nest from the grass, and watching the
she-bird for a moment, lightly climbed one of the
trees as though used to it, and replaced the nest of
fledglings amidst its sheltering leaves. A naïve little
burst of gladness betokened that the feathered mother rejoiced once more at the possession of her young. Mina, absorbed in the proceeding, had remained immovable. Now, however, as the stranger stood once more before her lifting his hat, with a gentle inclination of his head, she blushed as she returned his salute, and then rapidly walked away.
In her confusion she had dropped her whole treasure
of violets. She did not look back or she would have
seen that some one stooped, and, carefully collecting the
scattered flowers, hid them away in his breast; then,
standing still for a moment, he shaded his eyes from
the beams of the setting sun, as yet scarcely intercepted
by the sparse foliage, and watched the receding figure
as it lightly passed down an avenue of noble old beech
trees. The red sunlight just then glowing on their
trunks touched the girl's loose-flowing curls, transmuting
their brown to reddest gold, so that, as if
encircled by an aureole, she seemed passing down the
porphyry pillars of some hushed cathedral aisle.
Hushed indeed, save for the call of the cuckoo--a faint;
far-off call, wafted as by fragrant gusts from some dim
green valley lying remote on the limits of the sunset.
When the girl had quite disappeared round an angle
in the path, the stranger started as from a trance and
strode hastily down the same avenue, and when he had
passed, shadows as of evening slowly swept over the
silent and solitary wood.
In spite of her disappointment, the good lady was
determined to make her party eclipse those of her
rivals. And to this end she turned a very whirlwind
of a woman. Not that she was ever idle--idleness
being in her eyes well nigh as heinous a crime as theft--but
the steady trade-wind of her activity now blew
a violent gale, so that her children scattered at her
advent like leaves before a high wind.
On the first day, broom in hand, and head swathed
like a mummy, she attacked the dust, her sworn enemy, climbing and ducking with the agility of a wild cat as she routed it from its favourite strongholds--the furniture being huddled on the landing, mostly with its legs sticking in the air.
On the second day, with tucked-up petticoats, she
went about sluicing floor after floor, till, like a female
Neptune, she had brought a flood about the place.
But on the third day dryness was restored again, and
order and symmetry were evoked from chaos.
Then there ensued such a boiling and baking,
whipping of cream, beating of eggs and roasting of
coffee, as filled the children with ravishment.
At last everything was in readiness for the guests.
The floor of the best room had been sufficiently polished
to endanger the necks of the lady visitors on their way
to pay their respects to the lady of the house.
The most conspicuous, if not most beautiful, article
of furniture in the room was the high, white porcelain
stove adorned with brass bands, and supported by way
of ornament what looked like four winged claws of
a beast of prey. Near it, highly polished too, stood a
piece of furniture much in use with great smokers such
as the late Herr Professor Lichtenfeld was in his time,
but forgotten in polite English circles.
In the corner opposite the stove, a walnut étagère
was covered with yellow Bohemian glass, Swiss wood
carvings, and a quite surprising number of florid
birthday cups and saucers with large inscriptions, all
invoking blessings or imploring remembrance.
A red damask sofa with bolster cushions occupied
the space opposite the windows, and dangling near it
was the broad green velvet bell-rope, heavily embroidered with yellow chenille and pearls. The chairs, too, were mostly covered with cushions embroidered in Berlin wool, with a dog, a sheep, or a shepherd invariably represented in the centre.
Curtains partly of red damask, partly of white muslin,
were elaborately festooned into metal holders, which
none but the mistress's own hand ever ventured to
disarrange.
On a side cupboard between the windows ticked a
gilt clock under its glass case, while the works moving
the hands also turned a spiral jet of glass, which issued
like water from a lion's mouth, as well as the grindstone
of a Cupid of similar metal, who was sharpening
an arrow. This clock was always inspected with
wondrous awe by Conrad and Otto on the rare occasions
when they were permitted to enter these sacred
precincts. On either hand of it was placed an alabaster
vase of gaudily-painted wax flowers, likewise under
glass.
Above the sofa two life-size family portraits represented
Herr Professor and Frau Lichtenfeld in the days
of their youth.
The Frau Professorinn, née Elise Duttenhofer,was
depicted with a leathery but high-coloured complexion,
bright brown eyes, and dark brown hair tightly drawn
off the face, à la chinoise, and fastened right on
the top of the head in elaborate puffs, while a spiral
curl, then known by the French word accroche-coeur, was
gummed to each side of her face. Her green satin dress,
with enormous puffs at the sleeves, was made very low,
displaying arms and shoulders that did honour to the
fattening qualities of the national "Mehlspeisen," or flour and milk diet.
The Professor's portrait, hanging on the darker side,
seemed chiefly noticeable for shirt-frill, shirt-collar, and
lank reddish hair. But whoever cared to scrutinize it
closer might have detected, even through the mediocre
execution of a somewhat characterless physiognomy,
an expression of singular earnestness and sweetness,
and in the dreamy blue eyes a sort of inverted gaze as
of a man always looking inwards or backwards.
These oil pictures were not cracked like English
works, but looked in a fine state of preservation, owing
to Frau Lichtenfeld's habit of polishing them once in
three months with a piece of fat bacon and a silk
handkerchief. The gilt frames of poorest pattern had
not, however, profited much by this, the gold being
considerably rubbed off in the process.
Frau Lichtenfeld herself, arrayed in a black silk
gown--got on the christening day of her first-born--sat
bolt upright under her portrait in the crispest of
caps and lilac ribbons; while beside her, in imitation
of her deportment, sat Lulu, with her golden hair
primly oiled and curled. Mina in disgrace, left without
orders to attend, had gladly enough made her escape
from the tittle-tattle which she dreaded.
The large round table in front of the sofa ought to
have groaned--if ever table before the days of
spirit-rapping did groan--under its load of cakes. Here were
"Zuckerbretzeln," "Zwieback," and "Bunt,"
"Mandeltorten," and "Mohrenköpfe," all national delicacies
with untranslatable names.
When the clock struck three the ladies gradually
assembled--gentlemen are of course excluded from these solemn rites. After many complimentary speeches and mutual protestations as to who should take the place of honour on the sofa, they settled down amidst much rustling of skirts. And presently, when they had partaken of the excellent coffee and other good things provided for them, their tongues buzzed busily to the accompaniment of their knitting needles.
"Yes, yes, my dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator,"
answered Frau Lichtenfeld to something said in praise
of Lulu; "the poor child was born after her father's
death, you remember, and takes after our family, of
course. She's quite a comfort already, follows me
about like a mouse, actually helps me to lay the tablecloth,
born little housewife that she is; but the Duttenhofers
always were a practical lot, so different from the
poor Lichtenfelds." (During this discourse Lulu was
giving proof of her practicality by a demure but
continuous consumption of the cakes.) "Yes, I might
say that I did but one unpractical thing in my life--not
that I mean to say that I repented it--repentance is so
unpractical--I'm alluding of course to my marrying
the poor dear Professor, blessed be his memory. And
Mina, you know, takes after her father, more's the pity.
She's always up in the clouds, but now since the Countess
has taken the bel étage, she's more past my
management than ever--not but that her manners are mending,
and high time they should, too."
At the mention of the Countess all the ladies pricked
up their ears, and so keen was their curiosity on this
subject that they not only left off praising their children,
abusing their husbands, and bewailing the degeneracy
of servants, but suffered their knitting to drop in their laps, so that an almost ominous silence succeeded the clatter.
The Frau Professorinn, who enjoyed the importance
of knowing a little, though in truth only a very little,
more than her neighbours on this subject, was not slow
to avail herself of the advantage to the utmost.
"Yes," she continued, fired by the curiosity of her
listeners; "one afternoon, come a month last general
mending-day, when Theresa, who was helping me with
the large basket, was just telling me that the Frau
Geheimräthin Fick had it from her husband that the
Countess--just think of it--was a spy in the pay of the
Czar of Russia, when there came a tap at the door, and
before I had time to say, 'Come in,' in walked----"
"Not the Countess?" exclaimed some of the ladies,
interrogatively.
"The Countess herself," said Frau Lichtenfeld,
casting a triumphant glance around, "looking so grand
and stately, with yards of black velvet sweeping my
floor like a broom, that it quite took my breath away;
and curtsying to me as if I were her Serene Highness
herself. Our Grand Duchess has not near such a
carriage, though she is the niece of the Emperor of all
the Russias!"
"I always thought that she must be some unfortunate
great lady in exile," complacently interposed Frau
Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengärtner, a stout, florid
woman, inclined to take a hopeful view of things.
"Now do tell us, what did you do, my dear Frau
Professorinn?"
"Why, I was so stunned that I forgot even to ask
her to sit down; but the beautiful lady sat down beside me, and said smiling (I never saw any one smile or sit down with such an air), 'Pray,' said she, 'accept my excuses, dear madam, for venturing to intrude thus abruptly upon you, but I have a favour to ask which I hope you will not refuse.'"
"A favour to ask!" echoed three or four of the ladies,
nodding or shaking their heads, as they happened to be
charitably or enviously inclined.
"Yes," continued the Professorinn, eagerly; "she
said she had caught sight of my Mina in the garden,
and that there was something in the child's face she
had taken a fancy to, and would like to paint into a
picture--for it seems, instead of doing embroidery
or crochet, she amuses herself with dabbling in
colours."
"Hm, hm, does she paint?" murmured an acid little
spinster, with snuff-coloured locks and a complexion
like kitchen soap. "I always thought for my part that
she was an impostor."
"Ah, my dear Fräulein von Griesbach, are you not
slightly confounding the justifiable æsthetic
make-believe with morals?" lisped Frau Scherer, in a plaintive
voice.
"You may imagine," continued Frau Lichtenfeld,
ignoring the interlude, "that I could not help feeling
flattered at such a great lady noticing my chit of a girl,
who is well enough to be sure, but no beauty."
"Her hair is against her, no doubt," remarked the
maiden of the straight, dingy locks; "it shines like
copper, and is always in a tangle."
"Well," resumed Mina's mother, bristling somewhat
--for though she was always abusing her daughter, she did not relish any one else doing so--"of course I was only too delighted to have my daughter's portrait taken, and told her that I had myself been painted in my youth by the Grand Duke's own painter, Herr Fridolin, (here the good woman cast an admiring glance at the likeness above her), still I could not help asking her what she saw in the girl. There was Wolf now, the flower of the flock, I should have thought he would have suited her ladyship far better, I said; but the Countess only smiled, shook her head, and repeated it was my girl she wanted. You see she told me she was lonely, had taken a fancy to her, and was quite grateful to me for granting her request. Think of that! There was ever so much I wanted to say and ask her, but before I had time to begin like, she was on her feet, bowing to me again in that stately way, and gone."
"And are you not afraid, honoured Frau Professorinn,"
remarked the maiden lady, "that poor Mina's
head may be turned in finding herself singled out in
this way by someone so much above her in station?"
"With all her faults the girl's not vain," retorted the
mother; "and the Countess often talks to her in French,
you know, which is as good as if we paid for a finishing
school, and will make quite a lady of her, as I say."
"Before taking her for a pattern," said Fräulein von
Griesbach again, "I think it would be advisable to
know why this Countess, young, beautiful, and fabulously
rich, they say, has come 'snowing' into our
midst from the Lord knows where, and lives quasi
hidden in this house (a house, begging your pardon for
saying so, gracious Frau Professorinn, so remote from
the fashionable quarter of the town), and who, instead of showing a natural wish to mingle in the elegant gaieties of the nobility, has positively, I hear, refused access to her presence to some of our leading magnates, and never yet shown herself at our theatre or public promenade."
"Well, well," remarked Frau Obertribunalprocurator,
in a soothing voice, "they do say that the poor Countess
was the wife of a great Polish nobleman, who, on being
sent into exile, went travelling from country to country
with her till they settled down in Alexandria. There,
incredible as it seems, the infatuated man was converted
to the religion of Mohammed; and so thought it a duty
enjoined by his new faith, I am told, to marry at least
three wives besides his own to show what a zealous
convert he was."
"The poor dear Countess!" commiserated some of
the ladies, though they had already believed and listened
to dozens of tales of the most contradictory character
respecting her.
"When the Countess found that all her expostulations
with that shameless renegade, her husband, were
in vain," continued Frau Hopfengärtner, "she left him
secretly (some say she has property of her own; others
that she made off with the better part of his, and serve
him right, too); and so has been in hiding ever since
for fear her rascal of a husband might do her some
mischief, being of a vindictive and desperate character."
"These demagogues and revolutionists always are,"
said Fräulein von Griesbach.
"But, my dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator, I have
it on the best authority," interposed another lady, who
had hitherto been silent, "that this Countess for all her
grand airs was neither more nor less than a singer, who starred it in every capital of Europe, till she married a pseudo-Italian Count, who played the devil with her money at cards, till in self-defence she ran away from him and came here to hide herself."
"Singer, indeed!" burst out the indignant Frau
Lichtenfeld. "As if I did not know a great lady when
I saw one, when my father, the Medicinalrath Duttenhofer,
attended half the great ladies in the land. Why,
our Grand Duchess has not such a bearing as she."
"Still there's a mystery round her," said Fräulein
von Griesbach, with a little spiteful toss of her head.
"Yes, that's it; there's a mystery," said the other
ladies, significantly looking at each other and shaking
their heads. After this the conversation veered round
to the inexhaustible topic of servants and their enormities,
which was suddenly interrupted, however, by
Lulu's loud sobbing.
The child had remained unobserved for some time,
and was standing near the table with one of its little
fists pressed into its eye; and the other holding a large
slice of unfinished cake. On being asked why she was
crying, Lulu presently recovered sufficient breath to
confess her piteous plight: "She couldn't eat any more--not
any more--of all the sweeties there."
"Go, take the cake to your brothers," said Frau
Lichtenfeld; "I hear them coming; the poor boys have
more cause for crying than you, silly child."
And now at a still early hour the ladies began folding
up their knitting and other work, and, curtseying themselves
out with many parting compliments, broke up
the conclave of coffee and scandal.
Mina never quite satisfied herself, however, whether
the greeting were really for her, or for the swallows
who in summer inhabited the storey above, or, in common
parlance, the eaves. But considering the terms of close
intimacy on which they all stood, it would have been
absurd to inquire too jealously as to the object of these
delicate attentions. Did they not share most things in
common, even to a kind of masonic speech, which none
but the initiated could understand?
The room just mentioned was small, like its inhabitant,
but nearly as bright and fresh. Ivy, growing in
plain earthenware jars, had been trained round the walls, which though simply whitewashed were thus tapestried in quite a festive manner. Here and there a space had been cleared of leaves in order to hang a few bookshelves, or to fix brackets on which stood vases always filled with fresh flowers. From the ceiling in the centre hung a flower-vessel in terra cotta, very much like an old Grecian lamp in shape, whence the long tendrils of a creeper fell in graceful festoons.
Against the wall, opposite the window, a narrow
bedstead was placed half-shrouded in white curtains,
and covered by one of those patchwork counterpanes
which are such an eloquent proof of thrift and industry.
A narrow strip of carpet, likewise of patchwork, lay
beside the bed on the plain deal floor. A table, covered
with a faded green cloth, stood by the window; on it
a globe with gold fish which, glowing like burnished
copper, circled unceasingly round it, like an emblem of
time itself.
Nor must we forget a mysterious book, bound in red
morocco with a steel clasp and a lock and key to it,
between whose leaves, had it been opened, would have
been found pressed wild flowers and thoughts like
flowers. Now it was a wreath of forget-me-nots, now
a pale tracery of primroses or flourish of violets, between
which were traced, in a girlish hand, sometimes only a
few words or lines, sometimes a verse or two. What
words? what verses? you ask. Pry who dare into the
secret heart of maidenhood; we shrink from such
profanation! Shut the book. Come away.
Walls, carpets, chairs, and tables, however, do not
alone constitute a room. The inhabitant breathes his
own soul into the inanimate objects and stamps them with his seal. Thus this little chamber seemed to be redolent of virginity, to smell of sweet fancies, to have dainty thoughts stored away amid its plain furniture, as lavender is laid between linen to keep it delicately fragrant.
Mina's duties for the day were over. She had toiled
through the A B C with Lulu, through the grammar
and geography lessons with her dreadfully unruly
younger brothers, who could never be made to remember
the difference between a noun and an adjective; and
invariably struggled through the declensions with the
feverish agitation of flies caught in a spider's web,
hopeless of ever getting out again in safety.
What mischief had they not again been up to this
day? In the middle of a dictation, while carefully
enunciating each syllable of the formidable word,
"Me-so-po-ta-mia," the teacher had been rudely
disturbed, nay, absolutely routed, in her dignified gravity,
by a multitudinous whirr of wings, darkly swarming
about the room like another plague of Egypt. For
Hans, that ringleader in mischief, had opened on the
sly the lid of a capacious box, wherein he had bred a
colony of cockchafers, which, just ready for flight,
rushed into space with a muffled whirr, covering the
walls and curtains, some even--oh, horror!--perhaps
attracted by its brightness, settling on Mina's hair, thus
driving her from the room with arms uplifted, amid
tumultuous uproar and screams and laughter.
Not rarely, indeed, did the lessons terminate in such
a climax of confusion and horror.
But Mina had now fled to her sanctum under the
roof. It was always hushed and quiet there. So hushed that she could hear the little brook hastily lapping among the weeds and grasses as it flowed past the garden; so quiet that the lisping of leaves, that the mere stir of a spray and the intermittent babble of Nature's arrant gossip, the wind, were as distinctly audible as the speech of some familiar friend. At times also, with almost startling distinctness, one heard the distant barking of dogs, the laughter of children at play, or the lowing of cattle trudging home to the stalls.
Curled up on the brown well-worn cushion of the
window sill, her favourite seat, by the way, the girl
overlooked the garden, then the fields extending to
the range of hills that had ever enclosed her horizon,
behind which, as it seemed to her, lay the world, with
all its boundless life and mystery.
A book of poems lay in her lap, but she was not
reading. She was indulging in one of those day-dreams
so dear to girlhood, in which a world, unsubstantial as
the cloudland of an evening sky, is constructed out of
nothing, to the unspeakable delight of the builder thereof.
Suddenly the girl, leaning out of the window, gives
a start and glad exclamation--"The swallows! The
swallows!"
There is a shrill twittering, an ebullition of song, and
a number of swallows dart through the air, or hang in
clusters to the trees above her. Not for long, however.
Ere that eastern cloud, all aglow with the sunset, has
faded, they have taken flight once more, and the black
flash of their wings has subsided behind the hills.
A pair, however, has remained, executing a thousand
graceful evolutions before Mina's eyes. Now they almost brush her cheek with the tip of their pointed wings, vanish, reappear, dive low, razing the grass, then soar aloft, rising higher and higher, till they seem mere specks against the faint hues of the twilight sky. Here they are again, hovering round the old nest, inspecting it now from this side, now from that, twittering in shrill tones, more expressive than any words, of their heartfelt joy at being at home once more in the old familiar place.
It seemed as though they would never have done.
But, then, they had so much to relate to their old
playfellows, Mina and the pear tree--of south lands far
over sea, of palm-trees and pyramids, of tawny stretches
of sand, burnt through, bare of shrub and herb, like a
bone gnawed and licked clean by the hot lips of the
sun; then of home sickness and the long, long voyage;
of the Peak of Teneriffe, that obelisk of the ocean,
where they alit a cloud of wings, and the weaklings
drifted helpless like leaves in a high wind, and were
swept from the precipices, fluttering down, down into
the yawning deep, never to fly any more with the fleet-winged
swarm, fly north to the green land of streams,
to the land of the lime and the slim-leaved willow tree
and steeples numberless; to the land where their nests,
whether clinging close to poor man's thatch, Gothic
roof, or castled wall, were ever hailed as harbingers of
luck.
Yes, all this and much more did Mina hear as she
sat listening to the blithe gossip of the swallows, which
subsided at last with subsiding day, abandoning the
earth to silence and twilight. Like a low prelude, which
by and by will usher in some mellow and perfect piece of music, a vaporous silver light faintly indicated the spot above the hills where the moon would rise anon.
But, hark! What sounds are these? Too aërial
almost to be evoked by human fingers, too full of
harmony for a bird's singing! An illusion, no doubt;
for not a breath of air even ruffles the profound silence
of the night. Mina listens again in amazement.
Surely these indescribably delicate, elf-like sounds are
produced by the strings of a guitar. Impossible!
Whence, wherefore, should come a musician to this
sequestered spot? Shyly wondering, the girl peeps
furtively through the half-open window; all she sees,
however, is the blurred shadow of the blossoming
pear tree on the grass beneath, but dimly lit as yet by
the rising moon.
Still the music swells into fuller, more continuous
melody; and who is this singing with low, seductive
voice--
Low singing through the night I go,
And as the starry beams
Into the mellow moonlight flow,
I'll melt into thy dreams.
Thou'rt like the mellow moon, fair maid,
I like that humble star
Which, by her light enthralled and swayed,
Stands worshipping afar.
The song was ended. Only a few expiring chords
still resounded from the instrument, then its strings
burst into a wild, almost unearthly twanging, at once
exquisite and demoniacal, which, growing fainter,
receded as if through the old garden gate and into the footpath beyond.
Although the moon had gradually risen above the
hills, and was now bleaching the untrimmed grass of
the garden and silvering the milk-white, thick-clustered
blossoms of the pear tree, not a trace of the mysterious
musician was anywhere visible. The exquisite charm
of the music had certainly ravished Mina to such a
degree that her curiosity had been merged in admiration.
She lay quite still, with her face hidden on her arm,
and in her childlike simplicity never thought that
either song or singer could have any connection with
herself. It was like part of the spring to her; as if
the sounds were being exhaled like scent from the
opening flowers. While she thus brooded, striving to
recall the exquisite air to her inner sense once more,
she did not mark a tapping at her door. Presently it
opened, and a tall woman softly entered, and was going
toward Mina, as though with familiar greeting, when
she suddenly stood quite still in an attitude of strained
attention. One could see her distinctly, illuminated
as she was by the level moonlight, which, streaming
through the window into the middle of the room, made
a sort of chequerwork on the boards there. It was
to this light perhaps that the beautiful features owed
some of their abnormal pallor, a pallor still enhanced
by the coal-black hair coiled in heavy plaits round her
head, and by the full-coloured coral of lips which even
the moonshine could not neutralize.
As she stood thus, with uplifted head and a haunting
smile, faint snatches of the wild exquisite air seemed
to be wafted from afar with a sudden gust of wind.
However incoherent the tune, its fantastic cadence seemed strangely to move this lady, for, apparently under its influence, she began slowly swaying herself to and fro, the undulating curves of her beautiful body being instinct with a dreamy voluptuousness, a sleepy grace, echoed, so to speak, by the suppressed glow of her dark eyes and the inaudible melody framed by her moving lips.
Gradually, however, this rhythmic motion seemed
to communicate a passionate impulse to her whole being.
As her gestures became more excited, a black lace scarf
fell from her ivory-white arms and shoulders, and now
advancing, now retreating, she snapped her fingers with
a passionate cry, and glancing over her shoulder, smiled
bewitchingly as though she saw some one there in the
empty air. All at once, however, she uttered a moan,
and bending low, pressed her hand to her ankle, while
a slight shiver passed over her frame. In this attitude
she stood as rigid as a statue, only in the dilated pupils
of her dazzling eyes there was a flicker as of fear, pain,
or yearning ecstasy.
In another instant her limbs, her features, nay, her
very eyebrows, seemed convulsed with emotion, then
with abrupt, violent gesticulations, with quivering lips,
with heaving bosom, with head thrown back in passionate
self-abandonment, chaunting fragments of a wildly
thrilling melody, she threaded the bewildering figures
of an intricate and mysterious dance.
Her long hair, shaken down by the vehemence of her
movements, and black as some raven's plumage, flapped
loosely behind her, while large death's-head moth
swooped on flurried wing above this tall figure fitfully
whirling in and out of the pale moonshine.
All at once the dancer burst into mocking, seemingly
irrepressible laughter. She had caught sight of Mina's
gaze, half amazement, half terror, fixed full upon her:
in the midst of her unaccountable excitement this
seemed to have produced a violent revulsion to mirth
in her.
Mina abruptly roused from her deep absorption,
had, indeed, been breathlessly watching this singular
spectacle. Her sensations were utterly bewildering.
She felt almost like a person labouring under a nightmare,
whose lips refuse to make a sound. Had her
friend gone mad? Or what was it that suddenly
seemed to transform the beautiful woman she admired
so enthusiastically into a weird demoniacal apparition?
What was it that invested the enchantment of her
smile, her eyes, her laughter, with the chill of an
ominous foreboding?
This whole scene, long as it has taken to describe,
lasted scarcely a few minutes. The lady, whatever
might have been the cause of her previous extraordinary
conduct, now moved towards the window with her
habitual languid grace, and placing one hand, sparkling
with many rings, under Mina's chin, said with a slightly
sarcastic intonation in her voice--
"What a child it is, with its little head stuffed full
of fairies, witches, enchantments dire, and such fantastical
fiddle-faddle! Fanciful to the extent of seeing
even in me, inoffensive mortal of flesh and blood that
I am, some hateful sorceress weaving spells by moonlight
to bring ruin on my dearest friends."
She laughed again and said, "Forgive me, but you
are too comic, Mina; indeed, you are!"
So saying she threw one arm lightly round the girl's
shoulders and, leaning far out of the window, gazed
intently across the hushed, moonlit landscape, across whose
grey breadths of light not so much as the shadow of a
moving cloud was to be seen. Long, long she looked,
sometimes faintly humming snatches of the same
fantastic tune. Suddenly she drew in her head again
with an impatient action, and turning to Mina said--
"No wonder you grow fanciful, my child, if you will
sit here by the hour with your head exposed to the
naked glare of this moon; or is there possibly another
attraction here; it's not the man in, but under the
moon, perhaps, that lends charm to solitude?"
She looked keenly at Mina for an instant as if she
would read her through arid through but seeing her
ingenuous face flush up with quick indignation and
surprise, she laughed again lightly as she said--
"I was only teazing you, ma petite; it's much too
good a girl, I know, even to harbour such wicked
thoughts. But by the way, Mina, I could never have
believed that my dancing, which was once upon a time
accounted the most graceful thing in the world, could
have given any one the fright it did you!"
"I am sorry, so sorry," stammered the girl in an
apologetic tone; "it came upon me in such an
unexpected, sudden manner--and then the moonlight, I
think, made you look changed and strange, as if----"
But interrupting herself confusedly, she continued,
"Oh, yes, it was beautiful, too beautiful! and I shall
not be frightened now if you will dance again, dearest
Countess."
"No, no," exclaimed the other, with passionate vehemence,
making an involuntary gesture with her hand, as though to wave back some influence which might once more blindly dominate her senses--"think you I would dance thus for your pleasure, girl? It was that I thought I heard that to which my limbs----No matter, no matter! An illusion, no doubt, caused by this detestable moonlight. Well, well! does it not often haunt me in dreams? But there, Mina, now you are opening your eyes again in that wide, wondering fashion, which is so irritating at times; you should get out of that habit. There are stranger things, let me tell you, in the lives of men and women--for all you look down upon them as commonplace mortals--than in all the fairy tales with which you have crammed your brain, till you can't hear a cat mew but you think there's magic in it. There, I don't mean to scold. I simply came up to see if you could sit to me to-morrow. I wanted to seek you out myself in your loft haunt for once, instead of sending Louise. Come early, for I want to send your portrait to the exhibition at Düsseldorf, you know. Now good-night; don't dream of me as a witch who flies out of window pirouetting on a broomstick."
So saying her visitor lightly kissed Mina on the
cheek, and again tittered ironically. The latter saw
her friend to the door, and profusely apologized for
her inability to light her down the narrow, break-neck
stairs.
Although the day outside was brilliant with that
shrill distinctness of light often peculiar to spring,
within all was subdued to low semitones of colour,
imparting to this room an air of mysterious quietude and
absolute seclusion. A certain liliputian reflection of
the outer world was visible, however, in an antique
mirror, wherein the green fragment of a landscape
receded far into a background tremulous with vernal
gold.
All clamours, and echoes of clamorous hours, seemed
to be for ever excluded from this dim, perfumed chamber, where, in a mellow twilight, a woman was sitting, combing out her long hair, darkly shed about her smooth white shoulders.
Intently absorbed in watching her own reflection in
the looking-glass before her, she did not notice the
girl's entrance till the latter, putting an arm round her,
had saluted her with a kiss; when looking up with a
faintly ironical smile, she tapped Mina on the cheek,
saying--
"So you are no longer afraid of me, little one! Truly
I did not know whether, crediting me, as it seemed, with
the gifts of magic and witchcraft, you did not intend
cutting me in future, for fear I should cast some spell
upon you, more especially as I am painting your
portrait just now."
At the remembrance of the weird, almost baleful
impression which her fascinating friend had produced on
her overwrought fancy on the previous night, Mina
burst into a merry laugh, and then with a sudden
transition from her exuberant gaiety to a certain
impassioned earnestness, she exclaimed fondly, "You
have indeed cast a spell on me, or how account for my
worship of you, Countess? But what could painting
my portrait have to do with the matter?"
"Oh," replied the Countess, carelessly, slowly passing
and repassing a tortoise-shell comb through her
luxuriant black hair, "I was alluding to an Eastern
superstition, according to which the person who paints
your portrait gets a hold for better or worse over your
soul--and mostly for worse," she added under her
breath, with a certain gleam in her eyes. "Therefore,
beware, beware, little one, how you entrust your portrait to my keeping; who knows but the day may come when I shall imperil your soul's happiness to serve mine."
While she was speaking she dexterously twisted her
heavy plaits round a dagger-like hair-skewer at the
back of her head, her movements being somewhat
impeded, however, by her companion, who had impetuously
flung her arms round her neck exclaiming--
"Do you think if there were truth in this superstition
I would not trust myself in effigy in your hands?"
"Well, let's not waste any more time, for I mean to
put the finishing touches to your portrait today," said
the Countess, passing Mina's arm in her own, and leading
her down the corridor into a lofty room, half studio,
half salon, in which the smell of oil paint was disguised
by rich, enervating perfumes.
On the lady's entrance two macaws of peculiarly
brilliant plumage began violently swinging themselves
backwards and forwards in their rings and screaming
vociferously.
Mina always felt herself transported into some
enchanted demesne of the Arabian Nights on entering
this apartment, so gorgeous to her, accustomed as she
was only to the most homely style of living and
furniture.
She was never tired of admiring the costly knick-knacks
and ornaments, not only arranged on cabinets
and stands, but carelessly strewn about in all directions.
Here a delicately tinted Louis Quinze fan was half
buried under a pile of music; there bottles of attar of
roses, worth their weight in gold, costly old laces and
richly embroidered scarfs were mixed up with brushes and coloured chalks, while Indian cashemeres and other Eastern fabrics were flung over sofas, or even on the floor, like common rugs.
What attracted the girl more than anything, however,
were the pictures, chiefly portraits, on the walls, and a
large portfolio filled with sketches of people and places.
She now again turned over these latter while the
Countess was arranging the draperies for a background
to her liking, and getting her palette ready.
Suddenly Mina came upon a sketch which she wondered
at not having noticed before, and which exercised a
kind of fascination over her.
It was a sunny Italian scene such as Leopold Robert
loved to paint. An open space on the Chiaja at Naples,
about the hour of sunset. A young girl of Capri, queenlike
of bearing, but with a tambourine in her hand,
seemingly dancing to the strains of two street musicians
in the midst of a circle of ragged girls children, and
fishermen. Her inimitable grace of motion was dashed
off in few colours by the hand of a master. On the
extreme foreground, leaning against the parapet, a few
scratches of charcoal conveyed the impression of a tall
man, seen in what the French call a profil perdu,
intently gazing, as it seemed, at the beautiful dancing
figure. It was the vivid impression of a scene that
had evidently stamped itself on a great artist's mind,
sunlight and all.
"Oh," cried Mina, impulsively rising and taking
the sketch to her friend's side, "what a wonderful
thing this is! Dear me, as I look at it, it seems to
remind me--why, it is----"
But before she had time to finish what she was going
to say, the Countess had snatched the sketch from the
girl's hand, and tossing it into a corner, said imperiously,
with a sudden flashing of the eyes--
"I wish you would sit still, Mina, and hold your
head in one position, if only for ten minutes, or I shall
once for all throw your portrait in the fire. What a
little plague you are, always rummaging amidst this
old litter of mine!"
Then, as if to make up for her irritable manner, she
chucked the girl caressingly under the chin and said--
"There, pet, just raise your head a trifle more in
that direction; no, more to that side. You can study
my copy of the famous 'Mona Lisa' yonder, while I
try to put in your eyes."
The Countess now painted away with fitful energy.
She put the eyes in; she took a piece of rag and rubbed
them out again. Then she put them in once more of
a different colour. For a while she looked at them,
then she threw down her mallstick, stepped back from
her easel, and said petulantly--
"There's something very perverse about you, Mina.
Do what I will your eyes still get that tragic look in my
picture, though they are sunny enough of themselves."
It must be admitted here that the Countess, though
she had occasional flashes of inspiration, was not what
would be called a good artist. Once she had had the
opportunity of studying under a great master, and she
might perhaps have attained considerable excellence
had it not been for an unaccountable perversity, which
no teaching or remonstrance could break her of. This
was a curious preference for some colours, and an
equally curious aversion to others, which at certain times seemed to grow quite uncontrollable. Thus though she occasionally hit off a very successful likeness, she usually injured it through too lavish use of red or hot pigments in contradistinction to the blue or cold ones.
Nevertheless, she had already exhibited several
portraits and one or two pictures, and at the time we
are writing of she was determined (for reasons of her
own) to make an income by art. She had taken a
good deal of pains with Mina's portrait, therefore, and
had on the whole successfully rendered the softly
rounded outlines of the face and the general character
of the features. While trying to put the finishing
touches to the breezy ripple of her bright chestnut
hair, she said--
"What magnificent hair you have, child! Only
Titian could have done justice to it. Now be honest
for once with me, and tell me how many of the good
youths of this town have paid you compliments on it,
for all your simple looks."
Mina, who had never speculated much on her
personal appearance, was more unconscious of herself
than many a child, and thought the Countess must be
mocking her, her hair having always been a source of
trouble to her.
"The boys often joke me about my hair," she said,
smiling in a deprecating way; "and when mother's out
of temper with me, she says it's part of my general
contrariness; and I think she fancies it has something
to do with poor papa's having been such a great
Sanskrit scholar."
The Countess, bursting into a peal of laughter, cried--"Oh,
Mina, Mina, what an oddity you are! But you'll
learn differently when you get a lover one of these days.
A pretty girl like you is as sure to attract them as a
candle does moths. Nay, there's nothing to look so
shocked about; friendship won't always suffice you, I
prophesy. Now promise me, Mina, when the first
lover makes his appearance that you'll make me your
mother confessor. There's that Lieutenant Knapp;
now, he seems a tidy youth, and from the way he
clatters up the staircase rattling his sword, I should
think his impatience to see a certain----"
"Please, please, don't talk like that," said Mina,
moving restlessly in her chair; "if you will only put
up with me and be my friend, dearest Countess, that is
all I care about."
"Yes, yes," replied the latter, "I do very well for
the present, but suppose I were to put your friendship
to the test."
"Put it to any test you like!" exclaimed Mina,
impetuously jumping up and kissing the Countess, who
was looking at her with her enigmatic smile; "and see
what there is I would not sacrifice, were it possible for
such a one as me to do anything for your happiness."
"Oh, Mina, these are weighty words, but I do
believe you are fond of me and have a faithful heart.
Well," she continued, passing her hand over the girl's
hair; "if I should ever be in trouble, be sure I'll
remember that there is a little friend----"
A rap at the door interrupted the speaker; and the
lady's-maid entered and handed a letter with several
foreign-looking postmarks to her mistress. The latter
took it languidly enough, but on seeing the handwriting uttered an exclamation, and feverishly tore it open. In a moment she had devoured the contents of the letter, and then began perusing it a second time more slowly and carefully. There were only a few lines, indeed, and these seemed written as though each letter had cost the writer a supreme effort. A wild excitement had suddenly taken the place of the lady's habitual languor, and she rapidly paced up and down the long room, while an irrepressible look of triumph flashed for an instant over her features. "He must and shall be mine yet!" she muttered between her teeth.
It was clear she had absolutely forgotten Mina's
presence. She rang the bell with violence, and when
the maid entered, said hurriedly--
"Pack up my things at once, Louise, and send Hector
round to Herr Professor Sontheim to say I must see
him immediately on pressing business: let him also get
everything ready for our departure, as I start for Russia
to-morrow morning."
Louise, like the well-bred maid she was, took the
tidings without any signs of surprise, as though this
was simply one of her mistress's many caprices. As
she was leaving the room the Countess called her back,
saying--
"Wait a minute, I will write a note to Herr Sontheim
myself."
She sat down at her secretaire, dashed off a few lines,
sprinkled them with gold sand, sealed the note and
handed it to the maid, who immediately left the room.
She then for the third time began conning the contents
of the letter, which ran as follow--
"Though I know everything, yet I forgive. My honour
and loyalty protect you from my revenge, had I wished
for any. I love you unchangeably, and all I ask for
the ruin you have wrought is, Come to me before it. is
too late! I am dying, but your secret shall die with
me!"
Having now engraved every word on her memory, the
Countess lit a candle, and holding the letter to the flame,
saw it shrivel up in a moment; she then hurried out
of the room, without a word to Mina, apparently to
give some further directions about her approaching
journey.
The girl on hearing of this sudden journey to Russia
had, indeed, been fairly aghast. To her small-town
notions of a journey, as a thing that must be arranged,
planned, and thought of at least a month beforehand,
such a proceeding was simply incredible.
An then to lose her friend in this abrupt manner!
the only friend she had ever had, and to whom she had
attached herself with all the ardour of a nature which
for the first time finds the shapes of beauty that have
haunted it incorporated in a living form.
What a contrast was there not to the imaginative
Mina between the prim Philistines of D----, with their interminable twaddle, and this noble lady, who, in her eyes, was invested with the double charm of beauty and mystery!
And now the Countess was not only going to leave
her thus suddenly, but while still present in the body
seemed already absent in the spirit.
"Why, pet," said the latter, who for the last minute
or so had been teazing one of her macaws, now sitting
down beside Mina, "what's the matter? One would
think you had the toothache, or is it that you are so
sorry I am going to Russia?"
Mina raised her head, and looking fondly at her, said
with brimming eyes, "To Russia! all that long way,
and so soon! No, no, you cannot be going yet!"
"Yes, yes, child, to Russia! Why if I were going
to the Antipodes you could not look more woebegone.
Cheer up! The world is not such a large place as you
imagine, and people are always knocking up against
their next-door neighbours in the most unlikely places.
We shall meet again; Mina, never fear."
"But you are going far, far away," sighed Mina,
with a droop of the corners of her mouth, as if she
were trying not to cry again. But it was no use trying;
in another minute she was sobbing as though a
terrible misfortune had befallen her. Poor child! to
her it was the first experience of parting from one she
held dear, and fancied that she held still infinitely
dearer; and a first parting is always a foretaste of death.
"Why she is actually crying in earnest, the little
tender-hearted goose!" exclaimed the Countess, taking
her scented pocket-handkerchief and daintily wiping
away the tears that were still rolling down Mina's cheeks. "Now do be good and don't cry any more, or I must ring for Louise to bring me another handkerchief. Besides, crying is bad for the eyes, and yours are too bright to spoil."
This playful tone, instead of cheering Mina, had the
contrary effect; she felt suddenly quite lonely, and miles
upon miles seemed already to intervene between her
friend and herself.
"Now, Mina," said the Countess, getting up and
beginning to collect some of the knick-knacks scattered
about, "come and help me put some of these things
together, like a good child. There," she continued,
taking up a coral necklace with a golden clasp, and
passing it round Mina's lovely cream-white throat,
"keep this in remembrance of me till we meet again."
Mina protested that the trinket was of too great
value for her to accept, and that she did not want anything
to remember her friend by. But if she wished to
make her a present at parting, would she give her that
sketch of the dancing girl that bore such a wonderful
likeness to herself. She did not as yet know the
relative value of the roughest sketch by a master and
trinkets.
The Countess looked annoyed for an instant, then,
shaking her head, said, laughing, "Not so bad an
exchange certainly, Mina; but what you ask is quite
impossible."
Then the girl begged for some little sketch or portrait
of her friend, but that too was denied, the Countess
remarking that she had a dislike to giving away any
likeness of herself.
"But don't look so downcast, my child," she said,
pulling Mina along with her to the other end of the
room, where her easel and colour boxes were, and
jumbling all her painting implements together in her
haste. "You must come and stay with me some day,
either at Paris or St. Petersburg, for I shall be rich
now, very rich, perhaps. Is there anything to astonish
you so much in that, Mina?"
"But you are very, very rich already," said Mina,
to whom her friend had always appeared as revelling
in the wealth of a Croesus.
"Oh, nonsense!" exclaimed the Countess; "I was
getting poorer and poorer, and was going to turn artist
for a living; but all that is changed now," she laughed.
"When I've settled down, you shall come to me, and
we'll introduce you to the world; and a lover, I dare
say, will not be long in making his appearance on the
stage, too. But I'm forgetting this levity is out of
place," she said, as though recalling something to her
mind, and assuming a sudden gravity which her eyes
belied, however.
Mina had not been roused from her sorrow. The
prospect of going to stay with the Countess was
certainly enchanting; but in the last hour she had
gone through an experience painfully startling to her
warm heart.
While the Countess was still busy getting together
some of her property, there was another rap at the
door, and a man of Falstaffian proportions was ushered
in by the maid as Professor Sontheim. He was chiefly
noticeable for one of those powerful Germanic heads
that look, and indeed are, a Cosmos in miniature. His
eyes of an indefinite blue, and the rest of his features were disproportionately small compared to the massive outline of his square-set jaw and lofty forehead, whose vastness was increased by a complete absence of hair, save for a meagre bright red fringe, extending from the temples to the back of the head. A man, however, usually finds a certain consolation for this lack of hair in the reflection that it gives him the appearance, at any rate, of having an abnormally large development of the cerebral organs. "Long hair, short wit," as the proverb has it, was a saying probably invented by a bald-pated person; the belief, no doubt, being a salve to the nakedness of his crown. Leopold Sontheim, with his clothes hanging about him in a loose, random fashion, giving one the uneasy impression that on the slightest provocation they might come tumbling down all of a heap, was got up for this occasion in floods of clean, rumpled linen, of innumerable pleats, which his waistcoat of checked buff, rebellious with starch, always refused to cover. His lavender-coloured pantaloons, of enormous width, were strapped down so as to project them almost over the shiny black tips of his light jean half-boots. A brown tail-coat, ornamented with gilt buttons placed high between the shoulders, flapped about his portly figure, its long tails swaying from side to side as he walked. Necktie he had none, but a velvet collar, a straw hat, and diamond studs; hideous in pattern, but of considerable value, completed a costume which, though creased, fluffy, and ill adapted to his red hair and pink complexion, the owner nevertheless knew to be in the last fashion.
To Mina's astonishment Herr Sontheim seemed quite
at home in the room, though to her knowledge he had never been there before. He was strangely excited, and on first entering seemed not to notice her, but was going straight towards the Countess in a rapid, vehement manner, when she said, glancing round at Mina--
"You must leave us for the present, my child; I
have to consult Herr Sontheim on pressing and
particular business." But seeing Mina's piteous expression,
she added, "If your mother permits it, mind you look
in again this evening, little one; I won't take leave of
you now."
Mina, who could not disguise her vexation at having
her last interview with the Countess interrupted, hardly
nodded to her old friend, who, for his part, seemed
utterly unconscious of her presence or exit.
Scarcely had the door closed when the Countess
motioning him to a chair, said, "I've sent for you
because I must instantly leave for Russia, and there is
no one I would turn to in a difficulty so soon as you,
Herr Sontheim!"
"Impossible! You cannot be cruel enough to leave
us so soon, Countess!" cried the gentleman, in a voice
he vainly tried to render steady.
"I must, indeed!" replied the Countess. "For I
have just received news necessitating my immediate
departure for St. Petersburg. But unprepared as I
was, I must in the course of this day raise a sum of
money not only sufficient to defray the expenses of
so long a journey, but to settle all my outstanding
accounts here, as it is quite uncertain when I may
be able to return. Now what would you advise, my
friend? I have some Brazilian bonds by me that you might sell on this emergency."
Herr Sontheim, instead of having taken the proffered
chair, had been pacing up and down the room in great
agitation. He now stood still in front of the lady,
exclaiming, "Heavens, Countess, you ask the
impossible with the charming peremptoriness of your sex!
Bonds cannot be converted into ready money at a
minute's notice, at least in this dilatory town of ours;
besides, the bank is just about to close. Surely there
is no such urgent haste, dearest lady!" he said, looking
at her entreatingly; "only give me a little time to
collect my thoughts, and everything shall be arranged
to your entire satisfaction."
While he was speaking the Countess had been tapping
the floor impatiently with her elegant Parisian
slipper; she now suddenly raised her eyes to his face,
exclaiming, "Good God! When one's husband is
dying far away in Russia is it a time to speak to me of
delay?"
"Your husband dying!" echoed Herr Sontheim,
taking two or three rapid strides across the room,
while a deep colour suddenly crimsoned his face to the
hair on his temples; then, sitting down close beside the
Countess, he said, lowering his voice, "Command me
in everything, dear lady; all I have, and myself to
boot, are entirely at your service;" and in a still lower
voice he added, "Is it necessary for me to tell you
so?" Then, after a moment's silence, as though the
thought had only just occurred to him, he added,
"So sudden! It must have been a dreadful shock to
your feelings."
The Countess lay back on the sofa covering her face
with her hands. Her bosom was heaving spasmodically,
and one or two broken sobs convulsed her beautiful
frame. Quite beside himself at this sudden outburst of
grief, Leopold Sontheim went down on his knees before
the sufferer. There was no one, luckily for him, to
witness the feat. "I cannot bear to see you suffer!
There is no man living worth one of those tears!" he
cried, in a voice quivering with emotion; and, seizing
hold of one of her hands, he pressed it with the
unconscious force of an athlete.
"Oh, you are hurting me so!" gasped the lady, with
her lips curiously twitching, as though she were trying
to overcome some emotion; and, withdrawing her hand,
she pointed to the deep, red incision of a ring which
the Professor's pressure had left on one of her long,
shapely fingers.
"Oh, pardon, pardon my brutality, dearest lady!"
cried Herr Sontheim with deep contrition, pressing his
lips on the spot indicated.
"You are forgetting my position, sir, and the object
of your visit here," said the Countess, with a certain
irritation of tone, as she motioned him to rise--a feat
which the Professor at length achieved.
"There is no time to lose," she continued; "if you
really wish to help me in this matter, you must do so
at once."
Sontheim sat down, and, slowly passing his hand
across his forehead, as though to clear his ideas, said,
after a moment's cogitation, with quite an altered
manner, and the tone of a man of business--
"As to those Brazilian bonds you mentioned, they
are bad things to negotiate at present. But let's see, what will you want about--you will be posting all the way--it cannot after all cost you more than about nine hundred florins, and if you will permit me to advance you that sum, I shall esteem it a favour you are conferring on me, dearest lady. I may say," he added, joyfully, "that I have from about nine hundred to a thousand florins in savings!"
"I thank you, my friend! But I am sure you will
understand that I cannot think of accepting your
generous offer. And you have such very economical
notions here in Germany," the Countess said, with the
faintest smile. "Nine hundred florins will never do!
Besides, I've just sent Hector to see about buying a
carriage for me, and I must wind up my outstanding
accounts here, as I mentioned before."
"Let's consider for a moment then," said the
Professor, jumping up, and pacing to and fro again.
"Oh, I forgot, there are my diamonds!" cried the
Countess, rising too, and begging Herr Sontheim to
excuse her for a moment.
She left the room, returning, after an interval of a
few minutes, with a large morocco case. Opening it,
she displayed a set of brilliants such as the dazzled
Professor had never yet beheld.
"How much are they worth?" he exclaimed, rather
awe-struck.
The Countess considered, and then said, indifferently,
"I think they were valued at fifty thousand florins by
a jeweller in Paris. I suppose you could sell them
for me?"
"Sell them!" exclaimed Sontheim. "Oh, that were
impious! Besides, they wouldn't give anything like a fair price for them here; if, indeed, you'd find a customer to make an offer for them."
The Countess, who had carelessly taken up a bracelet
and was slipping it on her arm, said, with a slight shrug
of the shoulder, "Instead of smoothing away difficulties,
you do nothing but raise new ones, Herr
Professor."
"Only in your interest, dearest Countess, and because
I would act for the best!" exclaimed Sontheim, deprecatingly.
"But I think I have hit on a plan that I
hope will meet with your approbation. Leave the
diamonds with me, and let me advance you the twelve
hundred florins you may require for immediate use; I
shall manage to raise them somehow; then the moment
I can get away, I will myself take your diamonds to
Frankfort, and negotiate a loan for you with Ladenburg
and Co. I can then settle all your debts here, if you
will kindly leave directions to have the bills sent in
to me, repay myself the trifling sum I shall have the
felicity of lending you, and the rest, if you will favour
me with your address shall be forwarded to you in
draft from the bank at Frankfort, if you approve my
scheme."
"My dear friend, thank you a thousand times for all
the trouble you are taking on my behalf," said the
Countess, rewarding him with one of her most seductive
smiles. "Nothing could be better than the scheme
you propose. When do you think you will be able to
let me have the money? As for the drafts you spoke
of, they had better not be sent on to me till I am sure
of my movements--I will then send my address."
"Let me see," said Sontheim, pulling out a turnip-shaped
silver repeater; "it is now four o'clock; I will
be back with the money at seven. But," he cried, as
though suddenly recollecting the state of the case,
"are you really going to undertake such a long, tedious
journey all by yourself, with only servants? Is it safe?
Ah!" he cried, becoming excited again, and looking at
her with glistening eyes. "Would I were the fortunate
man to be allowed to escort you thither! Is it not
possible?" he added, oblivious of everything else for
the moment.
The Countess shook her head softly, and gave him a
long look from under her half-drooped eyelids. "That,
my friend, is impossible," she said, "under the present
melancholy circumstances;" and she pressed her
handkerchief to her eyes again. "But we are wasting time
here," she continued, in an altered tone; "if you can
procure me this money, do it at once, there's a good
man!"
"I hasten to do your bidding, my lady," cried
Sontheim, raising her hand to his lips. Then, seizing
his hat, hurried to the door, where, turning round once
more, he said, "I will be back without fail at the time
mentioned," and left the house deeply commiserating
the beautiful woman.
The Countess had no sooner heard the street door
close than, rising from the sofa and humming the
popular tune--
she passed into her bedroom, where her maid, busily
Oh qu'il est beau, qu'il est beau, qu'il est beau,
Le Postilion de Lonjumeau,
engaged in packing, was folding up a magnificent ruby-coloured velvet dress, trimmed with Venetian rose point.
"What are you doing, you idiot! Will you never
learn the proper way of folding velvet?" cried the
Countess, in an irate voice, snatching the dress from
the abigail's hand, and giving her such a violent push
that she sent her spinning against a large wardrobe, a
corner of which bruised her shoulder.
When Mina returned, towards eight o'clock, to take
a final leave of the Countess, to her surprise she saw
Herr Sontheim with his hat in his hand, a wild look in
his eyes, and broad red streaks furrowing his brow,
rush past her on the landing without recognizing her.
The Silberburg, in sooth, seemed a
spot purposely created for the celebration of this most
poetic of all festivals. It was a beautiful garden,
planted on a hill, in the centre of which stood a spacious
pavilion, and near it a semicircular stand embowered
in frees, but opening on to a lawn in front, and capable
of affording ample accommodation to the excellent
orchestra, which, on certain grand occasions like the
present, replaced the usual military band. The before-mentioned
grass-plot, smooth as an English lawn,
reached nearly to the hill's edge, but was fenced off by
a screen of lime-trees extending along one side of it.
Beyond these a growth of underwood formed a green
garden wall, not high enough, however, to shut out the
view into a cozy strip of valley, chequered with kitchen gardens and orchards, and threaded here and there with the silver glint of a rivulet. To the north and south of the lawn extended small groves of shrubs and trees which at this season of the year were a perfect labyrinth of intermingled blossom. Here clumps of laburnums showered their vegetable gold over the delicate cloud-like bloom of the lilac trees, there--like some gigantic chandelier on which May has kindled ten thousand tapers--a broad-boughed chestnut tree held its roseate blossoms aloft; while yonder, most poignant scented of flowers, pale jasmine stars gleamed athwart the gloomy green of their foliage.
Yes; the flowers had mustered in full force! It
seemed as though in their hot haste to put in an
appearance at this festival, which they apparently
regarded as given in their honour, some had hardly
given themselves, time to smooth their petals, which
looked as though still tumbled from sleep.
And now that the flowers were there to receive them,
the children likewise appeared on the scene. For
this was pre-eminently a children's festival, and the
enjoyment of the grown-up folk consisted, to a great
extent, in watching that of their little ones. According
to custom, most of the young girls were clad in white,
and a prettier sight could hot well be imagined than
that of children of all ages now gradually assembling
on the lawn which they were to have entirely to themselves
for their games and dances.
Their elders meanwhile were sitting round the
numerous little tables, where the feminine occupants
chiefly consumed coffee and cakes, while their male
relatives solaced themselves with beer and tobacco. The mammas, it need scarcely be said, were fully occupied in admiring their children, and were constantly circulating backwards and forwards between them and their seats. The young ladies, whose turn was to come later in the evening, when there was to be a ball in the pavilion, were now walking about by twos and threes, or standing in groups, chatting and laughing with the young men, few of whom had arrived as yet; others, again, were busily flitting hither and thither amongst the children.
Just as the orchestra struck up one of Strauss's
animating waltzes, two men engaged in eager conversation
issued from a by-path and seated themselves at
one of the tables, so as to command a full view of the
entire festive scene.
"I have hardly yet recovered from the pleasant
surprise of meeting you thus unexpectedly!" ejaculated
one, whose portly proportions were unmistakably those
of Professor Sontheim. "To think that you have
actually been here three whole weeks, and only now
made yourself known to your old comrade! Shame,
shame, Emanuel! But you always were a whimsical,
unaccountable fellow, for all your genius. I bet that,
according to our proverb, you'll only cut your wisdom
teeth at forty, true son of Suabia that you are."
The other laughed, and said, "That's right, Leopold;
I see you have not forgotten your old views respecting
me. I remember how, when we were long-haired
students together, you used to express them to me with
that charming courtesy and candour for which we were
renowned. You, I remember, used to be considered
the sentimental savage of our circle, and we even nicknamed you 'Isegrimm.' But now you have, to all appearance, developed into a full-grown élégant," glancing slightly at the fashionable points of his friend's costume.
"Well, well," rejoined Sontheim, not without
complacency, "from the raw youth to the man of the
world there's room for progress. Life, I begin to find,
is not such a bad invention after all. Once I was as
defenceless as an unfledged chicken, and drew in my
horns at every breath; but now I'm armed like a
porcupine, and able to hold my own against man--and
woman too."
"Then hold your own with the waiter and catch
him as he passes, or our wit may run too dry," the
stranger remarked in bantering tone.
"Now he is here, in what liquor fit for the gods
shall we celebrate this auspicious meeting, Emanuel?"
"Let's have Johannisberger," said the one addressed,
"for so joyful a meeting can only be drunk to in the
most precious of wines."
"I have no objection to make;" replied the other,
slightly raising his eyebrows. "But, now that I think
of it," he added, with a comically pensive expression,
"the good old adage recommends wine after beer, but
deprecates beer after wine. Yes, yes! it's never wise
to neglect these saws. Waiter! some bottles of Bairish
beer and a bottle of Johannisberger."
Characteristic of the two men was the beverage each
had selected; indeed, broadly speaking, all Germans
might be classified as either beer-imbibers or wine-imbibers,
and such a classification might well take
the place of ethnographical or political subdivisions.
Thus no greater contrast could have been found than
these two friends, who seemed to have met after a long
lapse of years. One huge of bulk, ruddy of face, and
"puffed up" with health, as it were; the other tall and
thin of person, slightly hollow-chested, and seeming
rather to be borne along than to walk, with eyes of
chameleon tints, and long, strong hair that always
seemed to have a storm in it. The same character
was expressed in the hands, with their knotted veins,
never for an instant still; they might have served as
models for some saint's or martyr's, so expressive of
spiritual energy were the long, pale fingers.
"After all, 'on revient toujours à ses premiers
amours!'" the latter abruptly exclaimed, as with a
mixture of humour and pathos he looked at the scene
before him. "What innocence, freshness, simplicity
reigns here, Leopold! What artless joy in young and
old! Look at those children there, crowned as of old
with moss and flowers, and dancing in a ring! And
those sturdy, broad-cheeked youngsters defiling in
procession two and two, bearing branches of birch and oak
and elder. Just look at those blooming girls all in
white, their long tresses plaited with ribbons, carrying
wild strawberries and cream and milk rolls to feed
those little ones there. It makes my mouth water, I
swear. Wouldn't I like to be that small urchin
yonder whom the tall girl is feeding so daintily with
her own beautiful fingers, for fear, I suppose, of his
daubing himself all over with the juice of her fruit."
While thus talking with a certain whimsical tone in
his voice, the stranger every now and then cast a quick,
searching look from end to end of the garden; and
suddenly, after one of those rapid glances, he said to his friend, "Leopold, do you ever think of Elfrida now?"
The latter, who, though giving an occasional
approving glance at the scene around him, had been
more engaged in he demolition of an enormous black
raddish, now drew the knife, with which he had
helped himself to a piece of Swiss cheese, from between
his lips, and said, with lugubrious mock gravity--
"I also was born in Arcadia, therefore it's hardly fair
to remind me of how you supplanted me. But, to be
serious, tell me about your life, Emanuel--your works,
your plans for the future, whence you come thus
abruptly, where you are going to from here. Why, you
have not even vouchsafed to tell me your reason for
stealing upon us thus incognito, for all the world like
Zeus when engaged in the pursuit of some fair mortal
maid! Come, I'm not to be blinded; confess, therefore,
confess as you were wont, old fellow. And
console yourself in advance, my son, with the reflection
that, the more heinous your sins, the more soothing
will it be to receive absolution for them. Ah," he
continued, stroking his portly double chin, "I really
possess the chief requisites of a father confessor.
Begin; I listen."
Emanuel laughed impatiently, and, shrugging his
shoulders, said, "Do you not see, Leopold, that I
shrank from the idea of the fuss that would be made?
My life turns perpetually in a dazzling, deafening
circle. I eat, drink, work, talk, even sleep in a fever.
Ah, you here in Arcadia know nothing of the incessant
wear and excitement of life in great cities."
"Arcadia!" grunted the Professor, parenthetically.
"I see you have forgotten our coffee parties and
carnivals."
"It may seem unkind, Leopold," the other continued,
"that I even avoided you on my first arrival; but you
will understand me when I tell you that I needed--I
might almost say, for the sake of my reason, absolutely
needed--this short spell of complete solitude."
Leopold Sontheim took his friend's emaciated hand
in his own broad fleshy one, and gave it a strong but
silent grip.
"Yes," continued Emanuel, softly, "I will tell you
some day, when we have greater privacy, for what more
particular reason I craved with an exceeding craving
for silence, obscurity, peace. After an absence of well-nigh
twenty years I was suddenly seized with a burning
desire to revisit once more the scenes and places of my
childhood.
"It was in Paris, in a crowded concert-room, when
this wish seized me. Suddenly, as in the vividness of
a dream, the hills, the woods, the vineyards of my
native town rose beckoningly before me; I heard the
swallow call me, and the stork, and the passionate sob
of the nightingale wailed from afar: 'Why tarriest thou
so long?' How describe the kind of pang I endured!
A hot, stinging sense of remorse enveloping my whole
past, a fierce thirst to plunge back into memories in
which my tired senses might be refreshed as in a bath.
'Home, home!' it cried in me. And that same evening
I settled my affairs as well as I could, took the
post-cabriolet to Strasburg, and then came on here, on one
of those beautiful spring mornings when everything in
the world seems to be born again except the poor human heart.
"As I walked through the dear, drowsy streets of my
native town; as I saw the blue hills nodding in on every
street, I seemed to myself like a ghost revisiting the
scenes of his former existence.
"I did not dare look at my father's house in the
daytime--the house whence I had fled, which I had been
forbidden to re-enter; and, before I could return and
heal the bitter breach, he, whose creed had barred heart
and home against me, had passed away suddenly, without
word or sign. Only in the quiet moonlight, when
I could venture near unseen, did I dare pace to and fro
on the pavement in front of it.
"The same old elm trees still rustled in the night air
as when I stood a child at my mother's knee, repeating
some hymn to her, or looking over the pictures of the
old family Bible; but the familiar faces had vanished
for ever!
"I could not bear it. I hurried away, Do you guess
the spot I re-visited next? The wood, the wood, of
course, Leopold. I went up the well-known hill, and
the delicate scent of the new-blown vines smote my
nerves with a pang of mingled pleasure and pain.
"But in the lapse of years, probably also owing to my
excitement, I had forgotten the way, and went now to
the right, now to the left, sniffing the air like a dog who
has lost his master's trail.
"At last, however, I came upon a landmark--the
little house commonly known as the Raven's hut, where
the grandmother of Elfrida used to live. There it was
with the bees humming about the blossoms, strangely
unaltered, yet, no doubt, long ago vacated by that kindly old dame who once moved so briskly about amongst her bee-hives, followed by the child and the old raven!
"Suddenly, however, I came to a dead stand. Who
was that propping up a young plant against the wall?
stooping painfully at her task? a lame raven limping
stiffly at her side? Was it possible the beautiful child
had been dead and buried so long, and that these two
aged ones had remained unchanged, untouched by time
and death!
"With my heart beating violently, and trembling like
a thief who dreads detection, I begged her to show me
the nearest way to the Engelswald. There was no fear,
however, of her recognizing me. The years had changed
me out of all semblance to the favoured boy she was
wont to entrust with Elfrida's care.
"She looked up at me with just the face I knew, and,
pointing down, said, 'Keep straight along this path till
you come to a brook further down, then turn to the
left; following its course it will take you straight to a
pool which is the finest bit of the wood. It is well
worth a stranger's while to visit.' The raven had
limped up to me, and, cocking his head in such a fashion
that his sound eye gazed straight up at me, his look of
unfathomable sagacity seemed darkly to hint that it
was labour lost to try and come over him.
"I strode on rapidly; I felt as if I had seen a ghost.
"'Here I am at last,' cried I, catching sight of the
water glimmering through the grey trunks of the beech
trees.
"As I looked down into that still, deep pool, across
whose surface the cloud-shadows drifted so languidly, there rose upon my soul, pathetic as the moon at midday, the memory of my first love. The present was annihilated. I was a boy once more. My heart beat high with the first ecstatic thrill of hope and love.
"'Here,' I cried, 'are the trees which I climbed to get
the birds' nests in order to show her the speckled eggs
so warmly and tenderly pressed each to each. Yonder
is the thicket where I gathered whortleberries and
hazelnuts! On the brink of this pool Elfrida used to
sit, dabbling her rosy feet in the water, and with
innocent coquetry watching the reflection of her beautiful
face therein.'
"'Oh, beautiful face! never has thy image left my
heart, image of my first love; would to heaven thou
hadst been my last also. To die so young! Never to
wait till I came back to lay fame and wealth and love
at your feet as I had sworn I would. To die and leave
me behind in a world where no one was ever again so
intimately twined with my heart-strings!'
"Restlessly I paced the narrow woodland paths, and
a pang of ineffable yearning seized me for the child that
was dead, had been dead and buried long, long years
ago. Then--as all that lay between that first pure love
and the present swept in one bitter wave of remembrance
through my memory--I flung myself on the
ground in a passion of sorrow, crying out, 'Elfrida,
come back, oh, come back to me!'
"The sound of voices, the rustle of a dress, recalled
me to my senses. Loth to meet anything in human
shape just then, I slid behind a clump of trees.
"'Good God! was I mad or dreaming? Was this
Elfrida come to life again at my call? the dead child re-risen, with the violets and daisies growing on her grave?'
"I stared blankly at the apparition; I passed my hand
over my eyes, only thinking her one more spectral form
come to haunt me on the paths we had trodden together
in bygone years.
"But no! this was no dead child come to life again;
neither was it a spirit of wood and water, though the
hem of its dress was wet as a naiad's, and its hands
were, at that moment, stretched out in fond protection
over beasts and birds like a beneficent fairy's. And
yet, when it lifted its eyes to me, those eyes shining as
with morning dew, I felt inexpressibly bewildered and
amazed. Those eyes, with the wide, unconscious gaze,
so distinct in my mind from all others, were the eyes of
Elfrida.
"I had hard work not to say to her, 'So you have
come at last, my child! Come, when I called on you
in utter weariness of heart. Do not leave me again.
Stay, oh stay!'
"Nothing could have been more familiar than her
presence. I had great ado not to take her in my arms.
But before I had time to recover my presence of mind,
before I had time to do anything but take off my hat
and bow like a fool, she went her way, and the sun
seemed to follow her."
"Why, it all ends in smoke, like 'the shooting at
Hornberg,'" grunted Professor Sontheim. "I expected
some grand coup de théâtre at the last, worthy of the
consummate artist. Take my word for it, your fairy
nymph or spectre was in sober truth nothing but a
little goose of a girl, who most likely had stolen to the wood on the sly that she might wash her face in maydew, which our silly maids hereabouts credit not only with unlimited curative qualities for removing freckles, sunburn, &c., but with an occult power of making them beautiful for ever. But you waved your wand of magic before her, and straightway she was transformed into a divinity."
"Let's have a bowl of maitrank, Leopold," said
Emanuel, with a faint ironical smile. "Perhaps after
a sufficient number of fragrant draughts you also will
see fairies in all the fair ones about us."
"Maitrank, capital! I will go at once and see after
the ingredients myself." And the Professor went
towards the pavilion with as much haste as his bulky
stature admitted.
He had scarcely left his seat, however, than Emanuel,
who had again restlessly glanced about him, gave a
start, and then for a moment or two evidently subsided
into brooding oblivion of everything around. Suddenly,
as if an idea had struck him, he left his seat with a
vivacity peculiar to him, and strode to the stand where
the musicians, after their vigorous efforts, had ceased
playing for awhile. Unobserved, he made his way to
the leader of the first violins and whispered something
in his ear. The man almost bounded from his chair,
but at a word from the stranger assumed an air of
unconcern, and in another moment had quietly yielded
him up his seat and violin.
The coming event had cast its all-engrossing shadow
across the good widow's thoughts for at least a month
beforehand; and she might often have been seen in deep
consultation with the seamstress, the maid of all work
and her neighbourly gossips, Frau Obertribunalprocurator
Hopfengärtner and Frau Scherer.
These two latter ladies had been summoned one
afternoon by the anxious mother to discuss and critically
weigh in the balance the respective merits of
pink, white, and azure. It was a knotty point, and so
the ladies found it over their cups of afternoon coffee.
We must remark, however, by way of parenthesis, that
the occasion had not seemed to warrant the Frau Professorinn in having fresh coffee made for her guests, who were consequently now imbibing a rather indifferent-looking beverage, which, carefully saved at breakfast time, had since then been put to warm in the oven.
"If I were you. I should decide in favour of pink,"
said the Frau Obertribunalprocurator, emphatically;
"pink is a sweet pretty colour, and, to my thinking,
always so becoming to dark eyes such as your Mina's."
"'Jugendzeit, Rosenzeit,' as the poet has it," lisped
Frau Scherer, who, under the impression of its imparting
a certain elegance, habitually garnished her discourse
with stray verses, proverbs, and pickings from
her brother's talk. Such sentences, however, had
frequently as little connection with her own words as
the bits of parsley have with the cold mutton they are
supposed to adorn.
"Yes, yes," murmured Frau Lichtenfeld, pensively;
"a great deal is to be said in favour of pink, a very
great deal. Now that I think of it, it was pink, so it
was, that I wore at my first ball." And she complacently
smoothed out the folds of her apron and gave a
knowing smile, which implied more plainly than her
words could: "Ah, what conquests I could tell of,
what triumphs, friends; and all owing to that pink
dress, and those roses of genuine Parisian make. That
was the time, dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator, you
remember my telling you, that the Chevalier von Tor
said to me, in a burst of enthusiasm, 'Ah, beautiful
Fräulein had I met such an enchanting vision of
youth and beauty in days when I might have--ah--summoned
up the courage--yes, the courage of aspi-
ring--ah--I should not be a lonely old bachelor--ah--but--
"What do you say to blue, now?" remorselessly
broke in the Frau Obertribunalprocurator, interrupting
these tender reminiscences which she knew from a
hundred previous experiences would meander on for at
least half an hour if not turned, into other channels by
a sudden diversion.
"Blue's heaven's own hue so tender and true!"
exclaimed Frau Scherer, enthusiastically. "How heavenly
sweet the maiden will look attired in a sky-blue robe!"
Therese, the seamstress, who, perched on a high step
in the window, was deftly turning Frau Lichtenfeld's
old-fashioned grey brocade that had been on duty these
twenty years, now leaned forward to join in the conversation.
She did half the dressmaking in the town, and
was quite a character in her way. Not only was she
considered a kind of genius for the skill with which her
nimble fingers turned old dresses into new, and appealed
to in the last resort as to all matters of taste and
fashion; but her knowledge as to what was, had been,
and would be worn by every lady, whether of high or
low degree, amounted to the miraculous.
"Begging your pardon, gracious ladies," she said,
while stitching away as fast as ever; "and if I may be
permitted to tender my humble opinion, I should say
white--white--nothing but white is the colour for a girl
to wear on first coming out. There's the daughter, now,
of the Frau Baronin, Fräulein von Berlichingen. She
came out this winter, you know, and of course you have
all heard how much she was admired. The sweet
young lady won't let any one but 'my Therese,' as she
calls me, make her dresses, even those she goes to court in. Well, I made her a plain white gown of the finest 'Donna Maria gauze;' nothing but that, honoured Frau Professorinn."
This argument did not fail of the powerful impression
it was intended to create.
"White, the colour of innocence!" exclaimed Frau
Scherer, with enthusiasm, "the garb of the lamb
and----" She stopped cudgelling her unwilling brains
to think of something else that should be equally
appropriate, when Therese came to her rescue by
adding--" and of the gänseblümchen" (the little
goose-flower, as daisies ace called in South Germany).
"Yes," she continued, "the gracious Fräulein Agnes
von Berlichingen wore her dress trimmed with daisies;
and a wreath of the same flowers in her hair."
"Oh, our Mina will look like an angel of light!" cried
Frau Scherer, ecstatically, casting her eyes to the ceiling--for
such was her wont.
"The girl will do well enough," said the Frau
Professorinn; but added, with a sigh drawn from the depths
of her maternal bosom, "Alas, she, is as careless of dress
as a tomboy, and I foresee already what a sight she will
be when, all rags and tatters, she comes home in the
evening. Well, Therese, I think we have settled this
point so far. You shall make us a dress the exact
counterpart of Fräulein von Berlichingen's, only it must
be of mulled muslin instead of gauze--a poor widow
like me with six children left on her hands, you know,
Therese, can't go spending money like a Frau Baronin,
for all that she is, or once was, the ninth daughter of
Medicinalrath Duttenhofer, and could hold up her head
with the best of them; and so, as I was saying, my daughter must not be a disgrace to him, in spite of her taking after her poor father's family; and she can't be got to understand, though I may talk myself hoarse to make her; and as to the daisies, Therese, we can get those for nothing in our garden; she's for ever lugging flowers into the house as I tell her--but it'll come in useful for once,--they won't be so genteel, I know, as the sweet artificial flowers at Madame Borrel's; but we must cut the coat according to the cloth, you know."
After having arrived at this important decision the
ladies set out in a body to purchase twelve yards of
muslin at Kübel's, the chief draper and haberdasher in
the Lange Strasse.
The eventful day had come at last, and, like a sheep
led to the slaughter, Mina yielded herself up with
passive resignation into her mother's hands. She had
been looking forward with wondering eagerness to this
day, but the rites of the toilet appeared to her to detract
considerably from the pleasures to come, and under her
mother's vigorous handling she lost all sense but that
of present discomfort. Besides the maternal hands,
two other pairs were busy about her person. At last,
being judged sufficiently prepared, the cloudy fabric,
white as a snowdrift, with touches of pale pink here and
there, was carefully passed over th