"Milksop! baby face!" and Peter gnashed his teeth, while he retreated from his immediate neighbourhood; "It shall go to its mother--it shall--and have its pap--and sit on its own mammy's lap, and have a smart new dress for her wedding-day. Ha! such a fellow as that is not worthy of a man's confidence. I did feel sorry to see you in a cunning woman's leading strings; and I pitied you--but now go to!--I despise you as much as I pitied you before. We two have had our last words together."
And with his most vicious look, Peter sauntered away, whistling.
Walter remained standing on the selfsame spot for half an hour, at least, without moving. His brain was reeling--he fetched his breath heavily, and shut his eyes, as though he felt ashamed to see himself by the light of day, while such thoughts were seething in his imagination. At last he heard Helen's step upon the stairs; he felt as if he had been scalded, and impelled by some inexplicable instinct, he seized his cap, and fled; through the garden, out into the open country.
She heard him go, but she had no suspicion that it was from her he fled; she went to the window and looked after him as long as she could catch a glimpse of his long light hair among the leafless shrubberies.
She thought she had wept away all that had been so heavy on her heart. People who are sparing of their tears expect wonders from them, and the good they are supposed to do, when they do flow. But she found they had done very little to solace her.
What made her weep so bitterly? She had long schooled herself to meet aggression with the tranquil energy of a mind, that no contradiction of fate can disappoint or surprise, for the reason that it is entirely without hopes or wishes.
She believed that she had nothing to expect from life--nothing to gain. Now, she had been suddenly reminded how much she had to lose.
First of all:--to a proud spirit the bitterest loss--confidence in her own heart. Those unsparing words, concerning her relations with a child, whom she had seen grow up to manhood, had sounded strange and incomprehensible when she had first heard them--she believed that she could shake them from her, as an insult. Other cares that had arisen during that interview with her brother-in-law, had then appeared more urgent. But as soon as she had found herself alone in her silent room, all other cares had dissolved like shadows, and the words she had so scornfully disowned--these words alone remained.
She thought over the ten years that had passed, since she had first entered that dreary house; when the intimidated boy, dumb between his adopted parents, who quarrelled over him daily, with ever-increasing discord, had come to her at once, and poured forth all the sorrows of his little heart to her, and had clung to her with overflowing love and confidence. Without many words, he had understood that she was to be his protectress.
It was a task she did not find easy always, especially as opposed to her own sister. But the compensation was a thousandfold, in her tenderness for the child, in whom his early hardships appeared to have blighted all the gaiety and elasticity of his age; and now under her genial influence, she saw these expand, brighter and more spontaneous, from year to year.
And she knew that he owed her more than this mere deliverance from bodily durance. She had been as indefatigable in the tending of his mind; in helping him to complete in private, the defective education of the common school which he attended daily. In this, she had no small opposition to suffer from her pupil and his artistic tastes; not to speak of her own inclination to do his bidding, instead of enforcing hers. Far pleasanter she would have found it, to sit working by his side, listening to his good-humoured rattle, while he was busy over some architectural drawing; than to tie him down to the thread of a weary lesson-book, that was to drag him through some dry essentials of education. But in all things she had taught herself to consider, first of all, his real wants and future welfare. She had never trifled with her maternal duties, nor been childish with her child.
Was it strange that, in time, the course of all her plans and wishes fell into this single channel? that, waking or sleeping, he was ever before her eyes? that these followed him, unconsciously, in all his movements when he was present; and, when absent, that she looked as constantly towards the door, and listened to nothing so interesting as his returning step?
And now when she mentally compared him with, all the other men she had known in all these years, was she not justified in believing that she could do without any and all of these, if only he remained to her? And there was no weak idolatry in this; she had never deceived herself. She saw that he was neither handsome, nor graceful, not even of very engaging manners; she often teased him about his awkward ways and helpless movements, and his duncolored shock of hair; she acknowledged that his features were commonplace; that his figure was a clothes-stick, for all the tailor's pains to make a man of him. Yet there was a charm about him, that even strangers and coarser natures, she observed, seldom could resist; a breath of freshest, purest youthfulness;--an innate tact of the heart; a dash of that genuine genial humour, that lends wings to the soul, and raises it high above the vulgar worship of any of the golden calves and idols of the day. It was strange;--but with this young pupil of hers, in worldly matters a child, she could discourse of the last aim and end of all mortal life, as though they had been centenarians in experience, and in years.
Thus it had been, and this had been their happiness; and was it to be no more? had it suddenly become so dangerous? Was it now to be avoided as a snare? She had been told to her face, that it was for the sake of this lad, that she rejected all her suitors. Well, she would not attempt to deny it. She would have deceived any man to whom she would have sworn to be only his. This feeling had grown to be a passion; but a passion that was hallowed by years of purest tenderness, of most unselfish sacrifice. She looked upon him as her own; and had she not a right to him?--what would he have been, without her?
And was she really to give him up?--The thought was more than she could bear.Hedid not wish to leave her--heknew how necessary she was to him. Could there really be danger in remaining as they were?--To him, certainly none; his whole life lay before him yet, wide and distant.Hecould not lose by perfecting his growth in shade and solitude. To suppose that her own presence could prove dangerous to him, seemed nothing less than madness. She felt herself older by ten additional years to those she already was.
Could he ever possess her heart more entirely than he already did? was that possible?--And if it were, what harm could it do her?--She had nothing else in life to make it valuable to her, but this one feeling.
And yet she had been weeping,--long and bitterly. She felt as if some mute veiled fate were ever by her side. With all her self-command, and bracing resolutions, wherewith to strengthen herself in her own rights, and in the consciousness that others could have no legitimate power over her--except she gave it them--she could not overcome a feeling of anxiety, and an instinct that their happiest days were over, and trials and difficulties impending.
The Meister's threat of sending the lad away on his Wanderschaft, had not seriously alarmed her. She knew that he would scarcely make up his mind to part with him. Certainly not to drive him to a course so contrary to his inclinations. To dispose of him in any other way, in the Meister's position, would have been simply impossible. Yes, there had been hard times of want, when Helen had gladly come to his assistance; and thus he had become dependent on her, in a manner that, though she never took advantage of it, made him feel a sort of tacit obligation to desist from any very violent opposition to her wishes.
In fact no woman had less reason to fear the despotic interference of any man in her fate. Yet words had been spoken, that never could be made unspoken; and they had brushed the bloom off what had been dearest to her on earth.
She only became clearly aware of this, as she looked after his retreating figure in the garden, and felt almost glad that she had not met him; for the first time she might not have been able to look straight into his eyes. She had no idea that, within the last hour, he too had been startled out of the peace of his unsuspecting mind. She believed that the suffering was hers alone; and in the midst of her anxieties, she found no small comfort in the belief, that like a true mother, she had contrived to conjure over her own devoted head, the hostile elements that were threatening his. This helped her to recover her composure, for in the more absorbing troubles, she had almost forgotten the disagreeable task before her, of having definitively to reject and mortify a man, for whom she had never felt anything worse than indifference.
When the clock struck the dinner-hour, she entered the large dining-room with perfect self-possession; and received the notary, who bowed low before her, as she would have received any other guest of her brother-in-law. The Meister had left his bed, and joined them in his dressing-gown, in anything but a holiday trim, or holiday humour. He now lay stretched on a sofa, at a little distance from the table. An old neighbour, a standing guest on Sundays, stood modestly waiting with the two apprentice boys at the windows.
Walter came in such visible perturbation that he could scarcely stammer out the commonest forms of salutation. Nobody however seemed to notice this, except his little mother; who, perplexed by the sudden change in his demeanour, threw him a look of dismay, which he felt too conscious-stricken to receive with calmness.
The Meister enquired for Peter Lars, and scolded at his delay, until they all sat down to table without waiting for him.
It was some time before any kind of general conversation could be established. Walter kept his eyes upon his plate, and held his tongue, without attending to anything that was passing round him. The old neighbour, who, in general, was rather fond of playing the connoisseur, and holding forth in rambling dissertations on drawing and effects of color, was silent this time, as he saw the Meister neither spoke nor ate, but ground his teeth for self-command in bodily torture. The boys were tongue-tied, naturally, in their master's presence; and thus on Helen, and on the Notary, who sat opposite, the whole cost of the conversation fell.
There was nothing remarkable about his outward man. Only a fine forehead, and a pair of clear calm eyes, were the attractions of his face. And there was an expression of animated benevolence in his countenance when he spoke, that, together with the masculine cast of his features, was especially captivating to the confidence of his hearers.
After the first awkwardness of his meeting with Helen, he became gayer and more conversible than he was ever known to be. He spoke of his travels in Sweden and Norway; of the Scandinavian races; of their customs and holidays; of their national songs. He talked pleasantly, for he never generalized, either in praise or blame--each thing was distinctly drawn, given in its own peculiar coloring, with its distinctive touches. Even old Christel, who waited at table, left the door ajar to listen to him longer; and the Sunday guest applauded with approving nods, shoving in here and there a choice remark or two upon Scandinavian Art, which the traveller was so kind as to leave undisputed.
And yet his pains were wasted. Helen's attention was an effort. Her mind was engaged in speculations upon the possible cause of the cloud that had come over her darling's spirits.
She hazarded a jest or two, to win him over to the general conversation. But a beseeching, almost frightened look, from the young dreamer, had each time induced her to desist.
The bottle of wine produced by Christel, had been emptied to the better health of their host; it had been the lawyer's toast--who had returned thanks silently by a slight nod. He had not drunk a drop, and hardly waited for dinner to be over, to drag himself back to his own room, in order to groan without restraint, and, unheard, curse his sufferings.
While the table was being cleared away, the others had gone upstairs to take their coffee in the sitting-room. There, between the pictures and plaster-casts with which the walls were covered, stood an old pianoforte. It had not been opened for years; but now at Helen's request, Dr. Hansen had seated himself before it, and played a few national melodies from the North.
He then sang some of the songs, with a voice that, if somewhat uncultivated, was very musical.
Helen had taken her work to the window, where Walter stood gazing out into the street, without taking any notice of what was passing.
Under cover of the music she whispered a few questions. What ailed him?--Had the Meister been scolding him? had he been quarrelling with Peter Lars?--Peter's absence she thought suspicious.
Walter only shook his head; and at last, seized with an unaccountable fit of restlessness, he jumped up, and was about to escape for a solitary walk, when just then the door opened, and visitors entered. They were relations of the Meister's, Lottchen Klas and her mother--Lottchen Ellas, who, but yesterday, had stood so high in her partner's estimation. To-day he only felt annoyed, when the little maid came smiling in under her mother's wing, with a shy look of satisfaction, that made him conscious that his defection would be a great offence to her especially. However he hardly spoke a civil word, to either mother or daughter; and when Helen began some playful remark about their party of the night before, he fetched a book from the cupboard, and in the face of all good breeding, he settled himself to read, as though he had been in the remotest solitude.
Not long after, somebody proposed a walk, and, with the exception of the old neighbour, who took his leave, the whole company was set in motion. The mother walking in front, with Helen and Dr. Hansen; Walter following with his pretty little partner. But he was as taciturn as before--all along the peopled streets, and out by the town-gate to a garden where the higher among the burghers were wont to enjoy their Sunday afternoons,--he never spoke one word; he even neglected to bow to passing acquaintances;--he had no eye for the dismayed little face by his side, that grew cloudier and cloudier, until a shower of tears appeared most imminently impending. Fortunately, before this crisis, one of her yesterday's partners came up to the rescue, and did duty both for himself and Walter.
Now, if he had been so minded, he might have stolen away and relieved his oppressed soul from the shackles of society. But in the morning he had had occasion to find out, that the tangle of his ideas grew worse in solitude. And besides, he felt irresistibly rivetted to Helen's presence, with chains he could not break. He kept an anxious watch over every gesture, every look, every word, that might possibly throw some light on his chances of really losing her.
He too had lived on heedlessly by her side, without ever asking himself, how long this state of things was to last--What they called the feeling that united them--so long as theyhadit, what cared he? From the time he could remember anything, or anybody, after the mother that bore him, Helen had been the person most essential to his existence.
And the last few years, that had brought him to the age of manhood and independence, had only served to strengthen the closeness and confidence of their relations. In the same proportion as he had grown beyond her guidance in commoner things, he came more eagerly to seek it in every thing that perplexed his head or heart. What she had been to him;--sister, mother, friend, play-fellow--grave or gay, the companion of every hour--he had no name for it. Indeed, he had never thought of naming it: with regard to her, the terms handsome--charming--least of all dangerous--had no sense for him; she was herself, and that was all he cared for.
And now he was suddenly to reconcile himself to the perception, that she was a woman like other women, creating passions;--attracting men, awakening jealous rivalry. The idea seemed so preposterous, that he felt as if his own life had become strange to him. Only last night, when she had told him of her first love, he had listened, as he had done when they used to tell each other fairy tales, and expound each other's dreams--and now these most inconceivable realities had to be accepted as facts--one man had been a suitor for her hand; another had been silently rejected by her.--Would these last pretensions find no favor in her eyes?--and if they did?--How insupportable he found the torture, when he tried to think of her as the wife of any man living. In his unsullied soul, there arose an indefinable sensation of wrong and shame, that ran through his veins like liquid fire. He would have given his life to shield her from a look; and when he recalled the coarseness of his comrade's words, he involuntarily clenched his fist. And yet, while he was walking behind her now, he could not take his eyes from her. For the first time, he observed the grace of every movement; he silently compared the classical lines of her neck and shoulders, to the massive shapelessness of the elder lady, and the insignificant prettiness of her little daughter. His eyes were opened, and they saw her graceful walk, and the way she placed her slender feet; and--when she turned to speak to her companion--the regularity of her clearly cut profile, seen in the relief of her dark bonnet; and then the glitter of her white teeth, when her lips parted, as they often did, without a smile, but with a pensive and rather lofty look, that was in keeping with the deep low tones of her voice.
Indeed she never smiled, unless when she was talking to him; this discovery rewarded him for his eager watchfulness, when she was talking to other men. Shedidlove him best; there could be no doubt of that. Why then tolerate the attentions of a stranger, if he was to be nothing more?
Thus he questioned himself, in his perplexity; when the perception suddenly flashed upon him, that after all, if shedidfeel youthfully enough to begin life afresh, he certainly had no business to prevent her--What compensation had he to offer her? Was it not the idea of a maniac, to suppose that she was to go on for ever, sacrificing her life to his; waiting upon him so long as he should think fit to go on calling her his little mother, and keep dangling by her apron-string?
When they came to the coffee-garden, they found there was a band in the saloon of the house, playing valses, and summoning the younger among the loungers to go in and dance them; an impromptu ball was soon arranged. The elders sat in the sunshine before the windows, occasionally turning their heads from their coffee-cups, to look round at the dancing vortex within, and see how their young people were amusing themselves.
Lottchen had asked and obtained her mother's permission to join the dancers, and now stood evidently waiting for Walter's assistance, to take advantage of it. But he rose, and pleading a bad headache, he walked away to escape from the noise and crowd; so with a sigh of undisguised regret, she saw herself forced to accept the offered arm of his more willing substitute.--
Helen saw what was going on but too plainly, and she had begun to divine that she herself might be the cause of Walter's change of spirits. How could he have heard of his adopted father's intentions? and if hehadheard of them, why should they so affect him?--The notion that jealousy could have any share in his vexation, never suggested itself to her mind for a moment. She wanted to talk it over frankly with him; only he had taken himself and his gloom for a solitary saunter, along the highroad, past the last detached houses, towards the open country, perfectly insensible to the charms of a lovely afternoon in early spring. He came to a halt before an ancient country-house long since deserted, and stood looking through the railings at the neglected garden--The dried-up basin of the fountain, that had long ceased to flow, was now filled up with decaying leaves and exuberant nettles.
A kneeling nymph in the scanty drapery of the French school, with her urn gently inclined, seemed bending over it, in melancholy contemplation of the weeds. It was a pretty little figure, and would have deserved a better fate. Now the sparrows made a perch of her polished shoulders, and the wreath upon her head was crumbling into dust. What kept Walter standing there so long, on the spot from which he could best see the contours of that figure as they stood out against the darkness of the grotto?
A measure or two of the merry music swept past him, borne on the evening wind; he looked as if he were waiting for the lonely beauty to rise to her feet, and come towards him. He could not tire of gazing on those slender lines of beauty, which many a time before, he had passed without even seeing, for all his artist eye--and now they seemed to haunt him; he began to feel uneasy; he tore himself away, and heaving a deep sigh, he thoughtfully retraced his steps.
He arrived just in time to see his party break up, but he did not join it. He followed at a distance, keeping his eye upon it.
This time, mother and daughter walked in front, with Lottchen's partner; while Helen and Dr. Hansen followed. He saw that she spoke kindly to him, and fancied he could see that the lawyer no longer doubted the fulfilment of his wishes. Now he even saw her laugh, at something her suitor said.
Their way home took them past the house where Dr. Hansen lived; they stopped before it, and he pointed upwards, and said something, to which she returned no answer; but her eyes followed the direction of his hand, and then they both walked on, as it appeared, in a graver mood.
Their distant watcher concluded that all was settled, and a feeling of unutterable wretchedness overcame him. He stopped, and tried to think where he was, and whither he was going?--He did not know, and he did not care--Anywhere!--Only not to that home where he should inevitably have to face her.
One of his former play-fellows came past, and found him standing; they exchanged a few words, which ended in Walter's accepting an invitation to take a glass of wine with him, and, arm in arm, the two young men walked away, and turned down another street.
Meanwhile, conversing on indifferent subjects, the others had reached the Meister's door; and here the women separated; but the lawyer remained standing upon the threshold, as if he found it quite impossible to part from Helen in this uncertainty.
She had looked round, more than once, for Walter, whose absence disquieted her; she was not so entirely absorbed, however, in this anxiety, as to forget the feelings of her present companion. She, too, desired that they might come to an explication.
"This morning, my brother-in-law told me what you had confided to him." she began, in a calm tone, but not with any coldness; "I have to thank you for all the kindness and regard, which I acknowledge to be the motives of the wishes you expressed to him. I have always entertained a high consideration for you, and taken pleasure in your society. But my life does not admit of any farther change. I do not wish to form any other ties. I shall be quite contented if I may continue the old ones; and have none of them prematurely broken. I owe you this frank explanation, and I hope it will not lower me in your esteem."
He turned white, and some time passed before he spoke; "You will not send me away without one ray of hope; may I never be any more to you?--Ah! do not say that this is your only answer!"
"Indeed it must be. I should be very sorry to deceive myself, or you."
"And is there nothing else to part us, save your own disinclination to change your present life?"
"My present life is enough for me;"--and she reddened slightly. "And I find its duties sufficiently absorbing. Besides--but let us say no more; my reasons are my own, and you may be convinced that I should oppose no trifling ones. Give up this idea, I beg--indeed, it would not be for your happiness."
She did not finish, for she saw that he did not listen; he bowed low, and turned away, and left her without another look.
His whole manner had surprised and touched her; for worlds she would not have given this earnest man the reasons that she had used against her brother-in-law. She stood at the door awhile, and looked down the street, to see if Walter was not coming home.
The night had quite closed in; a mild warm night like midsummer. She could scarcely say why she felt so strangely loath to go into the house.
At last she went upstairs, without first going into the Meister's room to bid him good night, though she heard him hobbling about, in evident expectation of her coming in to give him an account of what had passed. But she longed to be alone; and the moment she reached her room, she drew the bolt after her, and lightened her bosom with a few deep drawn sighs. It was so dark, that she groped about some time before she could find her matchbox, which was not in its proper place. Altogether, she thought, some one must have been there, and disturbed the method of her usual arrangements. At last she found her lamp; but before she had lighted it, a musing mood came over her, to which she found the darkness most congenial.
She went to the window, and leaning her brow against the cool glass, she tried to live over the last few hours.
Here, on this very spot, she had poured forth her whole heart in a torrent of tears. Now she felt it aching still, but there was a sweetness in the pain.
She now foresaw that from year to year she would become lonelier and more alone, and that at last shewouldhave to give up the only being she loved. But her affection for him--thatshe felt, nothing ever could oblige her to give up. Even if he could be happy without her, she, at least, never could care for any happiness that severed them.
On reflection, she became more composed; nay, cheerful. She began to long for his return, that they might have a quiet evening together like the last.
All at once, she heard a sound quite close to her, she thought it might be he, and that she had overheard his step in the next room.
"Is it you, night-rover that you are, Sir?"
No answer--yet she felt certain that she had not mistaken. She listened with sharpened attention; again that suppressed sound. "Who is there?" she called out, with a leaping heart. Still no answer!--She went to the table to light her lamp; suddenly a dark shadow was at her side, and a nimble hand stopped hers, as she was about to strike a light. She was not much startled:
"What are you doing here, Walter?" she said, drawing back; "how did you get in? I thought I had bolted the door.--God in Heaven!" she shrieked. "Peter Lars!--how is this!--What brings you here?"
It was so dark that she could not have recognised him; except for a peculiar trick which he had, and she hated; a hoarse way of breathing audibly.
And now she could distinguish the outline of his figure, and involuntarily retreated towards the door; but with one bound, he had intercepted it--
"Don't be frightened, Mamsell Helene," he said, with an ugly nervous laugh; "I mean no harm. It is not, to be sure, that darling poppet, our young man, who rules the house. It is only the vermin, Peter Lars, that creeping, crawling worm. But a worm won't hurt you, if you don't crush it, and unless you really mean to set that pretty foot of yours upon my ugly head, and--"
"What do you mean by taking such a liberty?" she interrupted him, with a show of self-possession: "Who ever gave you leave to come here, into my room to make a scene? I should have imagined you to be sufficiently aware of my opinion of you."
"Exactly so," he sneered. "It is precisely because Iamaware of it, my very dear Mamsell, that I desire to know the reason of it, and what I ever did to vex you. And as you never yet have done me so much honor as to speak to me when we meet elsewhere, I took the liberty of waiting for an interview here. If you should vouchsafe to tell me that I am drunk, allow me to tellyouthat you are wrong. I give you my word I have not drunk a drop more than I found necessary to untie my tongue. Pluck, you know, my dear young lady, is a thing a man never can have too much of; and now I have enough to ask you what you are pleased to object to in my humble person. Eh! we are so cosy here, quite by ourselves--couldn't you be a trifle kinder? Or have you really no kindness left for Peter Lars? Have you been so lavish to your own sweet poppet, and to that precious quilldriver, your new betrothed? Have you nothing to say to a fine young fellow like myself, an aspiring artist, who is, without bravado, worth ten of such?"
"Be silent, sir, and leave the room this instant!" commanded Helen. "Not another word! and you may thank the wine you have drunk, if this insolence--"
"Oho! fair lady, softly! you will be ready to come down a peg or two in a moment; after all, we are two to one, myself and my wine; and when my pluck is up--not to speak of my love, and I adore you--Nay," he added in a lower voice, "I would not harm you for the world. I really had no bad intentions. If you had not been so stupid as to spoil my sport, and find me out before it was time, I should have let you go to bed in peace. I meant to have crept out after I had made sure that you could not possibly escape me, nor shirk the answers to a question or two I have to ask. I do assure you, proud Mamsell, I have the greatest regard for you--quite a respect--and for all my pluck, if I do stand here to keep you from the door, it is only because--"
He did not see the dangerous light in her eyes; her silence and apparent impassiveness misled him.
"It would almost appear that I really have been so fortunate, as to hit upon a humaner mood. If you would but listen to reason, adored Mamsell, you would find that the varmint, Peter Lars--"
At the same moment he found himself firmly seized by the collar, and thrust aside with a sudden jerk of a resolute woman's hand.
In the darkness, he fell over a chair, and got his feet entangled among the bed-curtains; foaming at the mouth with rage and hate, he freed himself, and rose; but the bolt had been withdrawn, and the girl had flown.
She flew downstairs, and went straight into her brother-in-law's room, waked him;--for as he lay on the sofa he seemed to have had the relief of a short nap;--and told him what had happened. He rose in agitated anger, took his burning candle, and went upstairs to her room with her. But the room was empty. The little miscreant had escaped; In the whole house there was not a trace of him to be found. The Meister called up old Christel, bid her search carefully in every nook and corner, and on no account whatever to open the door, if he should come back at a later hour. Next morning he should be dismissed in form. Then he asked after Walter, and growled when he heard that he had not yet come home; paced up and down with angry gesticulation, heavily dragging his lame leg after him, till at last he limped downstairs again, leaving his light behind him, without saying one word to Helen, who had been standing silent in the middle of the room.
As soon as ever she found herself alone again, she bolted herself in, with trembling hands, and sank upon a chair by her bedside, pressing her face into her pillows, that she might neither hear nor see a single object that reminded her of the disgraceful scene she had just gone through. After a time the dead stillness of the house brought more calm to her agitated spirit, and quieted the blood that coursed so wildly through her veins.
She rose and looked all through the room again, to convince herself that she really was by herself. There was a recess where she kept her dresses, closed by a curtain, and there he must have stood; she shivered again as she saw the crumpled folds. To rid herself of the odious recollection, she took down a book from her bookshelves, and settled herself with it in a corner of the sofa. But to read it was not so easy, she could not fix her scared ideas to the black letters before her.
She found it insufferably hot and close in that small room, but she feared to stir out of it in case of another ambush. She put down her book, took off the dress that confined her movements, and felt relieved as she walked up and down, with uncovered neck and arms, plaiting up her long dark hair for the night.
Her candle was placed so near the glass, that she might have seen herself quite easily; only her eyes were fixed upon the floor, and her thoughts were far away.
In this manner more than an hour elapsed, and her weariness began to warn her, that it was time to seek some rest, when the door of the adjoining room was cautiously opened, and she heard a light step cross it, and a knock at her bolted door. After the first thrill of momentary terror, the recollection came, that the house had been shut up, the miscreant flown, and Walter not come home.
"Is that you Christel?" she called through the door. A very subdued "yes" came back to her. The old servant often used to come to her before going to bed, to consult her in some kitchen dilemma. Without farther demur, Helen unbolted the door--It was Walter who stood before her in the darkness of the doorway.
"It is I;" he stammered, with a beseeching, almost frightened glance; both faces turned crimson in a moment.
"Helen!" he began again, and she started when she heard him call her by her Christian name. She felt his moody eager eyes upon her. In the dress in which she now stood before him, she might have appeared in any ballroom; only it had never so happened that he had occasion to see her in any other than in her dark high morning-dresses of almost conventual cut.
"What brings you here?" she asked in a tone of cool severity, that was to serve as a mask to the emotion within. "How could you so mislead me? Could not you have told me it was you? Go now, at once. This is no hour for conversation."
He did not move, but stood gazing at her white shoulders, as if they had been a vision. With ready tact, she felt that it was now too late to cover them with a shawl, while a retreat towards the darker part of the room, would have been an insult to herself.
"Do you hear me?" she repeated, in a tone he could not but obey; "I choose to be alone just now. Any thing you can have to say to me, must keep. I am more vexed than you seem to be aware of. To think thatyoucould deceive me! If it should happen again, we two are parted."
His eyes fell before her angry looks, and then she turned away abruptly, and went back to the table, as though he had been already gone, and he did go. She heard him gently shut the door, and slowly walk across the adjoining room.
Before the last lingering step had died away, she was already steeped in the bitterness of remorse and self-rebuke. She had condemned him without a hearing. She called up the mute reproach of those mournful eyes that had been gazing on her, and pictured to herself what he had felt, when she had dismissed him thus. That day had separated them more than they had ever been before. He had not been able to go to sleep without talking it over, as they had always done. Now he had come innocently to her door, and had answered her enquiry without thinking--certainly without meaning mischief, and he had been sent away like a detected culprit; expiating, unawares, the outrage of another man, an hour before.
She found it so intolerable to be alone with this remorse, that she fastened on her dress again, took up her light, and went into the sitting-room.
She would have liked best to go straight up to his garret-room, to excuse the flightiness of her temper, and to beg him to forget it and forgive her, but from this, on reflection, she desisted. She would rather go downstairs to old Christel, she thought, and speak to her about some household matters; for which, to be sure, there was no hurry, but she was yearning for the sound of some familiar human voice.
When she came to the landing place, she was not a little startled at seeing Walter sitting in the dark, on the upper steps, leaning his head upon both his hands. She could not be certain whether he was awake, or had fallen asleep; for he did not move when the door opened behind him. She set down her candlestick upon the top of the banisters, and in a moment she was seated by his side on the steps; he lifted up his head, and made a movement, as if he would have risen and taken flight.
"I beg your pardon," he said; "I hardly know myself, how I came to be sitting here; but I will go upstairs directly--"
"Stop one moment; pray do!" she whispered softly; "I am so glad to find you here; I had no peace after I had been so cross to you. Forgive me;--this has been an agitating day to me in many ways; there have been many things to pain me, and I made you suffer, poor dear, for what you could not help."
He did not answer, but looked straight before him over the dark staircase.
"Are you really angry with me?" she asked; he shook his head. "Angry with you, I nevercouldbe, he said mournfully.
"What was it that made you come to me so late?" she began again, after a short silence. "You wanted something, that I saw by your face, only just then, I was in such perplexity about my own affairs, as to seem cross and indifferent to those of others. Would you like to talk to me now?"
"What good would that do? I shall hear it quite soon enough?"
"Hear what?"
Still no answer; only when she said: "I do believe you are seriously vexed with me," it came out at last. "Is it true," he murmured, with averted face; "is it true that you are going to be married to that man?"
She started; a new sensation, strangely sweet, thrilled to her heart. She laughed, as we do laugh, to ourselves, when we are quite alone, at the memory of some delicious moment in the past; of happy love--of brilliant triumph--of success in some feat of our boyish days. What it was that delighted her so much, she could scarcely have defined.
"What makes you think such silly things?" she asked, completely returning to their old footing; "don't you know I shall never be going to be married to any man? When one has had a great big boy to educate, and just got him out of the roughest rudiments, one really has no time for other people; and who would thank me for bringing them such an unruly step-son? Who put these fancies into your head?"
He told her; and they sate there side by side, for some minutes, without saying anything.
"No, indeed, my dear boy," she began at last, in a tone of singular solemnity; "I never mean to go and leave you, for the sake of any human creature living. It is no sacrifice on my part; and you owe me nothing for it. I should have to chain up my own heart first of all, were I ever to settle down to any other mode of life,anylife in which you were not the first and foremost. I have felt this for years, and shall never feel otherwise probably as long as I live. But for you, there must, of necessity, come a time, when the claims of your little mother will have to be reduced by half; when she will have to content herself with only a duty share in your thoughts and feelings; lucky if she does not fare worse, and be stowed away in the lumber-room of memory, like an antiquated piece of furniture. Don't you contradict me; I know well enough what I have to expect, and a true mother never thinks of herself. All mothers have to bear the same, and the best way to bear it, is with a brave face; and now, away with care! For the present, I am yours, and you are mine; and as far as I am concerned, nothing shall ever part us. I give you my word, and here is my hand upon it, and now--let us go to bed, and sleep upon it."
She rose, and he mechanically did the same. When she stood at the top of the staircase, and he a few steps lower, she just reached to the tall stripling's forehead; she threw her arms tenderly about his neck.
"You are not to get into the habit of that ugly frown, mind that!" she said caressingly; "frowns don't become you, and you have no reason to frown on life like any old grumpy misanthrope--such a spoiled creature as you may well afford to laugh,--smooth away, I pray, all these precocious wrinkles; and now, my son, good night!" She kissed him softly on the forehead, and passed her hand lightly over his tangling curls. Then, taking up her candle, she glided back into her own room.
The night that followed on such an eventful day, brought Helen both repose and sleep. She believed her difficulties to be overcome, and her troubles postponed for years at least. But she would hardly have looked so cheerfully after Walter, as he walked away to his day's work at the Burgermeister's Villa, had she known that he had not been able to close his eyes till morning.
In painting that saloon, he was destined to have no assistance but that of the two boys: the Meister being confined to his room, and Peter Lars nowhere to be found. It was rumoured that he had been seen at the "Star." It appeared to be his plan to stay away, and let himself be missed so long as to be received with thanks, and not with abuse, when he did come back at last. However the Meister seemed quite disposed to do without him, gave Walter his instructions, wrote to the capital for more assistance, and sent the truant's things after him to the Star, without wasting any words upon the subject.
Thus a few days elapsed. The atmosphere of the house was lowering; never a laugh now, nor a gay word. These three inmates--for Helen too, had begun to wear a graver face--lived on together, without exchanging more than a necessary word. When Walter came home in the evening--for he did not even leave his work for dinner--he would swallow down the food that had been kept for him, and then go straight to his room, on plea of fatigue, regardless of the questions asked by poor Helen's melancholy eyes. She well knew that if he left her, it was not to go to bed; for in the morning she always found his light burned down.
And if he left home weary, it was not from over-eagerness to get to his work. The villa was situated at about two miles' distance from the town, just where the forest began and the country became more undulated. It had originally been built as a ducal shooting-box. It had passed through the hands of numerous owners--through some very careless ones; and at last, in a farmer's, had been turned to more profitable purposes. When the Burgermeister bought it, he found it dignified to boast that he had a mere country-seat--a villa that cost so much and rented nothing; and so he decided on having it entirely renovated in the original style, and on opening the gardens to the admiration of the public in the summer season. The distance was no more than a pleasant walk for the townspeople. Yet Walter had been known to take two hours to it and more. The boy apprentices enjoyed a game of ball in the shell-gallery, or a little mischief in the gardens; while their young taskmaster, in his meditations, loitered about among the leafless glades, until the sun, darting into every nook and thicket, would rise so high, as to remind him that he had been sent there in some other capacity than that of overseer to the building of the birds'-nests.
Then he would hurry back to the house, scare the lads with a harshness they had never seen in him before, and fall as violently to work as though he meant to do in a day, or in half a day, what would be the work of weeks. But he would soon let his brush drop, and sit motionless upon the scaffolding, staring at some vacant spot on the opposite wall, where his fancy had conjured up a charming vision--a pensive face, and the turn of a graceful head resting on snowy shoulders, a pair of admirably moulded arms, of that smooth pearly white, which art so rarely renders, and is but too apt to turn the head of the artist who attempts it.
Almost half the week had been spent in this desultory way, when one morning the Meister called up Walter, and believing the ceiling of the shell-gallery to be finished, all except the centre-piece, he gave him an old engraving to sketch in with charcoal in the necessarily increased proportions. The Meister proposed to be there before twelve o'clock, to see if the sketch would do. It was an engraving after Claude Lorraine, with some architecture in the foreground, set off by a group of lofty trees. As for the sunrise in the background, that, the Meister thought, he should like to do himself.
Walter set off with far more alacrity than usual. His task allured him; frequent practice had made him quick at landscape-drawing, whereas he always preferred to leave the figures to his comrades.
The ceiling had been originally planned with a centre-piece of allegorical figures; but, of course, since Peter Lars' defection, that was not to be thought of now.
Walter was just thinking of this disagreeable personage, and rejoicing in his absence, when he heard a voice behind him, and looking round, he saw the very man coming after him at a brisk pace. He stopped, and waited for him with an instinct of vague curiosity. He wanted to discover why he had been so suddenly turned off--he had heard no particulars.
The black-faced little fellow, who was walking along in full travelling trim, with staff and knapsack, appeared to be in his happiest mood; his pursed-up lips wore their sliest sneer, with even more decided mischief in it than usual. His eyebrows were drawn up to his cap, and as he called after Walter, his voice sounded like the treble tones of a chaffing boy.
"You are the very man I wanted to see;" he began, even before he had come up with him. "Scheiden und meiden thut weh!--partings are grievous, you know; and though I could have done all my partings with my principal in writing, well enough, I wished to take leave of you, for I had a thing or two to tell you, that would not have done quite so well in a letter. So if your people did not forbid you to contaminate yourself with an outlawed miscreant like myself, I will walk your way with you a bit."
"As you please; but tell me what you did, Peter, to bring things to such a sudden crisis?"
"Did? pshaw! a piece of nonsense! I was a donkey, my very dear and very proper young friend, as, of course, you have heard--unless perhaps they did not tell you, lest evil communications should corrupt good manners."
"The chief thing, I suppose, I do know," said Walter reddening. He only knew what old Christel had told him; viz., that Peter had come home drunk, and been disrespectful to Helen.
"The chief thing!" sneered Peter; "a pretty chief thing to make a row about! I have done many such chief things, and more to the purpose, in my life, and not a cock crowed after me. If I had not been such a confounded ass as to let myself be found out too soon, and get kicked out like a mangy houndbeforeI had got what I came for, I could have laughed in my sleeve, even if they did kick me outafter. As it is, I have made a fool of myself for nothing--got blown up and turned off, while others remain behind to laugh at me as I deserve. Eh! why don't you laugh. Propriety? You seeIlaugh at my own clumsiness!"
"I don't see what there is to laugh at," said Walter coldly; for he bitterly repented of having suffered this little villain to walk by his side.
"Don't, then," he said jeeringly; "Milksop that you are!--You have a spirit that is as blond as your head, and as your mother's was, when she suffered herself to be so taken in--"
"Fellow!" cried Walter, flaring up with sudden passion; "if ever I hear my mother's name on your lips,--" and he held his strong fist in the wizened face of his tormentor, who stood still with a look of defiance.
"Softly, old boy, take it coolly," he said. "There are moments, I am aware, when even the sweetest milk is apt to turn sour; but never mind; I don't see what I should gain by quarrelling with you before I go. You always treated me fairly--like a gentleman, I may say; for our principal I was a mere machine; for our adorable Mamsell a toad; you were the only person in the house who treated me as a fellow-creature; and so, old fellow, I mean to do you a good turn before I go. When all the rest are abusing me, you can say: 'Well, poor devil, he was not so bad a fellow after all!'"
"Come to the point;" said Walter, losing patience; "I have work to do."
"Work, have you? Ah! poor dear, I dare say. Now you have to be first and last; man-of-all-work, and Jack-of-all-trades, until the Meister finds another Peter Lars--if he ever does--or ever looks for one. When the old screw took you in, out of Christian charity, of course he had no idea that you could ever grow up to be a man, and do the work of two, and earn him a mint of money. Oh, no!--not he! he never dreamed of such a thing! I say, has he ever increased your wages? or is my young gentleman too high for such low ideas?"
"What are you driving at? what do you mean by all this nonsense?" cried Walter, out of patience. "What can it signify to you, if my foster-father--"
"Foster-father!" echoed the other, while his eyes were dancing with malicious mirth. "Well, for a foster-father, perhaps, it might be fair enough; but when we come to think of what a real father will do for a son, we can't say much for what he has done for you--especially when we consider what he ought to have done for your mother, that he left undone."
Here he looked Walter full in the face. The young fellow stood before him with heaving chest and quivering nostril, in fearful agitation. He staggered back, and leaned against one of the trees that formed the avenue. With a shriek of sardonic laughter: "Ha! is it possible?" he cried, "just look at him! he really has no suspicion how things stand! Ha! sancta simplicitas!--well, it was your luck that made me stop a day or two at the 'Star', and lay hold of that old fellow of a porter, who used to be in the Meister's service. I made him tell me the whole story; and, but for me, this pretty pattern of a helpless orphan might have lived to threescore-and-ten, without being so wise as to know its own father!"
Walter still stood thunderstruck--his lips moved, but his voice failed him.
"What makes the boy stand there, turning to stone, as though he had just heard the trumpet sound for the judgment day? I say, don't you go on being the soft chap you are, that anybody can take and twist to their own purposes. You open your eyes, and look sharp, and take what rightfully belongs to you. Take my advice--maintain your place in the world in a proper manner, even if you did come into it in a manner that may be called less proper.
"Come, let us be walking. I have a long way to go, and feel a most desperate desire to get out of sight of that den of Philistines behind us."
"Peter!" said Walter, struggling painfully to recover his composure; "Is there more in what you have just been telling me, than mere talk and gossipping nonsense?"
"Ask the old one, if you don't believe me. Ha! shouldn't I like to see his face, when you come upon him unawares, and call him 'Dad!' And I tell you it is all as true, and as well proved as twice two. And if you had not been really as great a baby as they took such pains to make you, you would have put this and that together, and worked out your little reckoning years ago. I did, for one, as soon as ever I put my nose into the house. I sometimes tried to give you a hint; and just because you took no notice, 'Aha!' thinks I, 'he knows all about it, and makes believe not to; and of course he has his reasons.'
"Besides, one has only to look at you two together to say--that is the block, and this the chip. The same long limbs, the same build--put you in the same clothes, and look at you from behind, and not one man in ten could say which was which. Of course, what is grown dark and grey and grizzled in him, is carried out in pink and white and yellow with you--the colouring must have been your mother's; and a deuced pretty woman she was, the old porter says. He saw her once, not long before she died; he had to take some money to her--on the sly, of course; since then he has never been able to forget her, he says, and that his master felt so spooney about her, he can't wonder at; far rather, that he could give her up, and marry the wife he did--our charming Mamsell's sister, you know; the two sisters were totally different in everything--except the tin, which was the same. I rather think the Meister must have had a try at the younger sister first, and been rejected; she was a haughty 'Frölen' even then, you see; and so he turned to the other sister, who was neither haughty nor handsome, and so she took him. However, I suppose she wouldn't, if she had but known of your own sweet self--you were just beginning to run about in your first little boots--and had known that her precious husband used, as often as he could get away, to go and have a peep at his former family about three or four times a year, on his business journeys. It was all kept so cosy, that not a soul ever heard of it. A sly fox your governor was--excuse the candour of the remark. But sly he must have been in this business, if you really did live so long without ever having smelt a rat; and in other respects you are as quick a lad as may be. His wife, however, somehow or other, in time did smell it, and hunted it down, and there was the devil to pay and all, as you may fancy. She kept the keys of the strong box, so of course it lay in her power to stop his business-travelling, and she did. More fool she! for it could not tend to improve his temper, you know; and at last, when a letter came--was it a letter, or the porter?--to say that your mother was ill and dying, and past recovery, you can imagine that the governor was not disposed to stand on ceremony. He started off alone, and did not come back for three weeks and more; he had not written either--what could he have written about her illness to his wife? Of course, the worst news of the one, were the best to the other. However, he did come back at last; and she might have lived in peace now that the other woman was dead and buried; only she couldn't. And there was the greatest row of all when one day he came home and surprised her with a little present--orphan or foundling, or whatever he was pleased to call you,--she might be as fractious as she would, the child was there, and there was nothing to be done but to be cruel to it.
"And this she honestly did, to her heart's content, as you know best yourself. The governor was forced to let two and two make five; he was seldom at home, and you were a soft chap then, it seems, as you are now, and you made no resistance, nor ever even complained of her. At last the old porter could stand the thing no longer; and so he spoke up, and told her it was a shame, and not the poor brat's fault if his mother had pleased his father better than such a vixen could. Of course she made the house too hot to hold him, and he said he felt glad to go, for he could not bear to see a child so knocked about.
"It appears the Meister felt the same, and so he wrote to his sister-in-law to come and stay with them. His wife was ill with spite and rage, and things in the house went topsy-turvy. Well, and so our adorable Helen came, and what she did, I need not tell you. So there it is; and it is a special satisfaction to me"--and he gave a sneering laugh--"that I got hold of Johann, and warmed him with a bottle of Bordeaux, till he let the cat out of the bag. It was a fair trick to play to that old screw.
"You can act upon it as you please; but I know, if I stood in your shoes, I should not let myself be treated like a fatherless beggar, and fed on charity. I would speak up and take another tone. He should send me to travel, I know; with something in my pockets to chink as I went along, to do or to leave undone, what I pleased. What business had he to go and sell your mother for any amount of money-bags whatever? If he did, I should expect the money bags to pay me for it."
With this they had reached the forest Walter never spoke a word; breathing hard, he strode away as if Lucifer were at his heels. The dwarf kept up with him, waving about his stick, and gesticulating with grimaces so grotesque, as would have made any other companion laugh. Now he stood still at a spot where the roads diverged, lifted his cap, and turned round, for a last look at the little town he was leaving.
"I am truly thankful, that we definitively quarrelled, the Meister and I, and did not make it up. Do you know, I actually did demean myself so far as to write him a note this morning, with the conditions on which I would have consented to return to him. For that he must miss me sorely, no one can deny. So without ceremony, I wrote. Imayhave been too free and easy, and thawed too fast. But he certainly gave me back as good as he got; for you know, when he is in the vein, he can write and talk like Buonaparte; let him!--If I did knock under, it was for the miserable reason that I could not find it in my heart to part from our charming Mamsell, for all her abuse and scorn.
"Bah! when once I am away from her; I shall come to my senses soon enough. But what I wanted to say to you, my boy, was this: follow my example, do as I do, and cut your chalks. You have no reason to fear that she will treat you ill; far more reason to fear the contrary.
"Do you know that she has given warning to her dangling lawyer?--and do you know why? I will tell you; simply because she is smitten by those two forget-me-nots of yours; and as you happen to be a spoon, you may take your oath that some fine day you will inevitably be sold--that is, married. You may stare if you like, and write me down an ass, if it be not as I tell you. It would be a pity; for, after all, she is your aunt; if not exactly, still she is old enough to be; and by the time you are a man in your prime, like me, she will be a withered old thing, and the very devil for jealousy, and you will have to sit by the chimney-corner all your life, instead of seeing the world and enjoying life while you are young, as every man ought to do.
"If I had been able to get her, I suppose I should have repented; but then I was madly in love with her, which you are not. With you it would have become a habit, if you go on as you are doing now.
"Well, well, no doubt you will cut your wisdom-teeth, at last. Think on my words, my boy, for I wish you well. Heavens and earth! what a face!--Have I upset you so by helping you to find a father?--and by no means, let me tell you, the worst father you could have;--not by a great deal, though I certainly have no reason to speak well of him. And now fare thee well! old boy, and carry back my compliments to those Philistines in their den. If we should chance to meet again somewhere or other, knocking about the world, I hope I shall find you a trump: give us a parting fist."
He held out his hand, but Walter did not take it; he continued staring vacantly before him and did not move a finger. With a volley of parting imprecations, half vicious and half facetious, Peter Lars twirled his stick, and went sauntering on his way, whistling.
The state in which this dark spirit left the blond, is not to be described. But the tumult of Walter's mind arose from such conflicting sources, that the one appeared to balance the other, and to produce a sort of silent stupefaction; only here and there, a word or two stood out from the chaos, and sounded after all, more strange than ominous.
He sometimes thought his comrade had amused himself by stringing together his own fanciful speculations, which in no way concerned him, and that the best thing he could do would be to laugh at and forget them.
He walked on, therefore, through the forest very cheerfully till he reached the villa; he entered the sunny gallery of which the great glass doors stood open to admit the mild spring-air, and having appointed the two boys their tasks, he climbed up to the scaffolding. He fastened the engraving before him, and proceeded without delay to sketch in the landscape on the white grounding. As before said, he was quick at architectural drawing, and very soon the temple stood out in correct proportions from the high elms and plane-trees that surrounded it.
Meanwhile, Peter Lars's disclosures had lain dormant in his mind, in a sort of unconscious twilight. But when he had finished his temple, and began to wonder whether the Meister would be pleased with it, he suddenly recollected that the Meister had promised to come out himself, and see what he had been doing. Yes, he would come--presently he would walk in by that door----how should he address him?--how call him?--Meister, as before?
The blood rushed to his forehead, and danced before his eyes. He sat down upon the ladder, and covered his face with his hands. He recalled his past life, and wondered what it would turn to now. Every one of those words of Peter Lars recurred to him--he could have put down every syllable in writing--in characters cut deep into his heart. He read them over again from beginning to end--and the end made him hesitate. What he had said of Helen appeared improbable--inconceivable--impossible! Yet what could he remember to oppose to it?--how much rather in corroboration of these conclusions?--
His blood was hammering violently at his temples, he dropped the charcoal, for he could not hold it The deep depression of the first few moments began rapidly to give way to a feeling of rapture, to which he had almost given voice in a shout of ecstasy.
He looked down from his scaffolding, away over the sunny gardens, where the discolored turf was rapidly changing to green velvet, and the young leaves, still folded in their opening buds, were only waiting for one drop of rain to burst forth full length. He heard the singing-birds warbling in the transparent air, and under the roof of the semicircle that formed the gallery, he saw the swallows busy about their nests.
His mood was glad and tender; he no longer thought how he should meet his father; or how he should act in furtherance of his darling wish to turn his back on paintpot and plaster.
He saw nothing but her earnest face, now with an unwonted look of tenderness; and those ivory arms and shoulders; and heard her voice with that accent in which she had said, as she had kissed him on the forehead; "so spoiled a creature can afford to laugh."