It was not so much the wish of the ladies, as the request of Carla that Ottomar had acceded to when he came in search of Giraldi. Carla was burning with curiosity to become personally acquainted with the man, of whom she had heard such an "immense number of the most interesting things;" it would be dreadful to lose such a pleasure! Could not Signor Giraldi get rid of his Excellency or of the Councillor? Could not Ottomar make a diversion by going in himself, and cutting short the Catholic question, or whatever other matter of high importance they might be discussing? Ottomar was so clever! Do ask him, Elsa! He will do anything for you! Elsa could do no less than say, "Pray oblige Carla!" and even then Ottomar had sat still, muttering that he did not speak Italian, till the Baroness said with an absent smile, "That need not prevent you, my dear Ottomar; Signor Giraldi speaks most European languages, and German in particular like a native." "Oh! why can't I go myself!" cried Carla. "If you wish it, my dear aunt," said Ottomar, and went. With very mixed feelings, however. He had only joined in paying this visit because Elsa seemed to wish it so much, and the Wallbachs had asked him so pressingly. But that he who, after his father, represented the family, should be the first to seek out the man whose name his father would never pronounce; the man who, if he might believe his father, had brought such sorrow and shame upon the family--this was too much for his pride. And yet in this very circumstance lay a demoniac charm which Ottomar, as he crossed the anteroom, with grim satisfaction allowed to take effect upon him. Had not his father just now forcibly interfered in his life, robbed him by his imperious proceedings of the woman he loved--now more than ever, made that life miserable, and brought her to the edge of the grave, perhaps to the grave, itself? Should he bow here again before the mere threatening shadow of paternal authority, or not rather rejoice that an opportunity was given him to set it at defiance? And this defiance had curled his lips in an ironical smile as he met the much-abused man. It seemed like an evil omen that instead of the Councillor whom he expected to find here, he should meet the Count, the last man he would have wished for as witness to a step which was almost a crime against the family honour, and was at least very hazardous. The words he would have spoken died on his lips, and the dark look with which he followed the retreating figure could hardly have been misinterpreted by a less shrewd observer.
"You have no love for that gentleman," said Giraldi, waving his hand after the Count.
"I have no cause to love him," answered Ottomar.
"No, indeed," said Giraldi; "for two more opposite natures could hardly be brought together. In the one, openly expressed, supreme satisfaction with noble qualities which exist only in his imagination; in the other, perpetual gnawing doubt of the admirable gifts which Nature has so freely lavished upon him; in one, the miserable narrowness of a hard heart divided between vanity and frivolity; in the other, an overflow of love, falling into despair because all its blossoms do not ripen." Ottomar looked up, startled. Who was this man whom he now saw for the first time, and who read his inmost heart as if it had been an open book; who at the first moment of meeting not only could, but dared to say this, as quietly as if it were a matter of course, as if it were not worth while to respect the miserable fetters of social conventionalism even for a moment; as if he could wave them away with a single movement of the slender, white hand? He looked into the black eyes as if asking for an explanation, and as he did so there crossed his mind the recollection, of a woodland pool by which he had often played as a boy, and which was said to be unfathomable.
"I have surprised you," said Giraldi. "I might perhaps make use of your astonishment to appear to you--if only for a short time--in a mysterious light, and steal into your confidence by pretending to be in possession of heaven knows what secrets of yours. But I am no charlatan; I am not even the adventurer to whom you have come half-unwillingly, half-curiously; I am only a man whose dearest hopes and warmest wishes have been so long crushed and broken that he has forgotten how to hope or wish, and that only one feeling is left to him, that of pity for all sorrows wherever he may meet them, and especially when the sorrow is so plainly expressed on a young man's face, at a moment when other faces are beaming with joy and gladness. And now, son of the man who is my enemy because he does not know me, give me your hand and tell me that you are not offended at my freedom!" He extended both hands with a fascinating gesture half of entreaty, half of command, and Ottomar seized them with passionate eagerness. He had suffered so much in the last few days, and had had no one whose band he could grasp, no one to whom he could unburden his overfull heart! And now from the eloquent lips of this handsome, strong, singular man came the first words of comfort! Were miracles possible then--or, as the man himself said, did the miracle only consist in the fact that one must be unhappy oneself to understand those who suffer? His heart overflowed; his beautiful eager eyes filled with tears, of which he was ashamed, but which he could not check. Giraldi released his hands and turned away, passing his hand across his eyes. When after a brief pause he turned back, there was a look of humble joy upon his expressive countenance, and his voice sounded softer than before as he said: "And now, my dear young friend, you will not forget this hour, nor what I now say; I am a poor man in spite of what people say; but anything in my power shall be done for you, for a glance of the eyes so wonderfully like those for which I would go to meet death this day as cheerfully as I would go to a feast. Come!" He put his arm familiarly within Ottomar's, and led him to the door which he opened and let his guest precede him. Ottomar did not turn; if he had he would have been appalled at the convulsively distorted face of the man who was holding the handle of the door in his left hand, while he raised the outstretched fingers of the right hand like a vulture's claws as he strikes down his victim from behind. The Count's entrance into the drawing-room had greatly surprised the Baroness; but a moment's reflection had been enough for her quick wits to guess at the state of affairs, and that this surprise was the work of Giraldi, the result of which she was to observe and by-and-by to report upon. Such an incentive was not needed, indeed; Elsa had become so dear to her in this one hour; every look of the joyous brown eyes, which, she well knew, could look so earnest too, every word that came from the little mouth, every movement of the slender, graceful figure--all, all was balm to her aching heart, that was languishing for true affection, for beautiful, undefaced humanity. How far behind the tender grace of her favourite must the brilliant Carla stand! Carla, with whom everything, every tone, every gesture, every turn of her eyes, every movement was called into play by an insatiable thirst for admiration, which did not by any means always attain its object, and often far outstripped its aim. She had closely compared the two girls, and each time told herself that a man who had Elsa for a sister could not really love Carla, and that no good would come of the engagement for Ottomar, even if he had not passed the threshold to it, so to speak, over the body of the forsaken beauty who was breaking her heart now in despair. To her who had been initiated into the secret by her tyrant, the remorse which devoured him spoke only too plainly in the nervous glitter of his beautiful eyes, in his sullen silence or the forced speech to which he again roused himself, and in the constant gnawing of the delicate lip between his sharp teeth. And she, who had given her hand and her word to the unhappy man, seemed to see and suspect nothing of all this! She could chatter and laugh, and flirt with the Count exactly as she had done a minute before with her betrothed, only that her frivolous game was evidently not wasted now, but eagerly and sincerely admired, and gratefully responded to to the best of the man's ability. And then her observant look returned to Elsa and met a pair of eyes which she had already learned to read so well, and in which she now thought she could perceive the same feelings that moved herself; sorrow, pity, astonishment, blame--all indeed in a lesser degree, as was natural in the young girl, who probably did not know the sad secret of her brother's engagement. And this sisterly sympathy was certainly not mixed with any selfish feelings. When the Count entered so unexpectedly, he had been welcomed by no joyful lifting of the eyes in which every thought was reflected, no brighter crimson in the cheek on which the colour always came and went so quickly; nothing but a look of astonishment which was little flattering to the new-comer, and which proved to Valerie how well her tyrant was kept informed by his spies, Everything that she had seen and heard in this last hour tallied in every particular with what he had foretold. And now he would appear, accompanying poor Ottomar, whom in these few minutes he would have won, fascinated, enchanted as he did all who came within his reach--he would enter like a sovereign who appears last, when well-trained officials have appointed each guest his place, so that the eye of the ruler need not wander inquiringly, but may glance with a satisfied smile over the assembly which only waits for him. He came in at last, only leaning on Ottomar's arm long enough for every one to have time to remark the confidential relations that already existed between him and the nephew of their hostess; and then hastening his step and leaving Ottomar behind him, he advanced to the party grouped round the sofa, whose conversation died away at once, as all raised their eyes curiously and wonderingly to the man they had been so eagerly expecting. And however many proofs Valerie had already received of the man's tact, she was again forced against her will to admire the consummate art with which--she could hardly herself have said how--he became almost immediately the centre round which everything else revolved, from whom came every impulse and interest, to whom every thought and feeling returned. Even Frau von Wallbach had raised herself from the comfortable attitude in her arm-chair which she had taken after the first words of civility and had retained unchanged till now, and stared with half-open mouth and eyes which looked almost wide awake at the strange apparition. Elsa had evidently forgotten for the moment everything that had been troubling her before; and as she turned after a little while to her aunt and drew a long breath, there lay in her countenance the silent acknowledgment: "This is more, far more than I had expected." Carla had the same feeling, and took care by her looks and gestures to let everybody know it, even before she openly expressed it.
"In these days," cried she, "when the want of lively sensibilities and of courage to express the little that still exists is doubly felt, I have reserved to myself the child-like habit of naïve admiration wherever and however I find what is admirable, and the privilege of Homer's heroes of giving unveiled expression to my admiration. And when among the insipid faces of the north--present company, gentlemen, is always excepted--I see a face for whose description even the sun-bathed portraits of a Titian, a Raphael or a Velasquez do not suffice, which I can compare to nothing but that miraculous picture to which I owe my most sublime impressions, to that indescribably dignified and yet most divinely benignant Head of Christ over the high altar in the Cathedral of Monreale at Palermo--I must speak it out though Signor Giraldi does raise his hand so deprecatingly, thereby increasing his resemblance to the picture, which will be to me henceforward indeed only a portrait."
"I am delighted to offer a humble theme to so lofty an artistic imagination as undoubtedly inspires Fräulein von Wallbach," answered Giraldi.
"I think we must be going," said Frau von Wallbach, with an absent look at the ceiling.
"Good heavens! Half-past two!" cried Carla, starting up; "how time flies in such interesting company!" The company dispersed; Giraldi, who had gone with them to the door, came back slowly, his head raised, his dark eyes gleaming with triumph, and a smile of contempt curling his lip. Suddenly, in the centre of the room, he stood still, and for a moment his face grew dark as night, but the next he was smiling again, and with a smile he asked:
"Is that the look of a victor after the battle?" Valerie had sunk back, with closed eyes, utterly exhausted in her chair, believing that he had left the room. At the first sound of his voice she started.
"Which you have won!"
"For you!" He bent down to her as he had done before and raised her hand to his lips.
"My lady's hand is cold, however warm I know her heart to be. The noise of the battle is not fit for her sensitive nerves. We must take care that she retires betimes to a quieter spot, where she may await the end in peace."
"What do you mean?" asked Valerie with a smile, though a shudder ran through her.
"It is a plan which has just taken shape in my mind, and which--but no, not now, when you need repose! not now; to-morrow, perhaps, when these eyes may shine more boldly, when the blood will run more warmly in this dear hand--the day after to-morrow--there is no hurry; you know that Gregorio Giraldi does not make his plans for a day."
"I know it," answered Valerie. He now really left the room; Valerie listened, she heard his door shut, she was alone. She rose trembling limbs and tottered to the chair in which Elsa had sat, and there fell upon her knees, pressing her forehead against the back.
"And Thou knowest it, Almighty God! Thou hast sent me Thy angel, in token of Thy grace and mercy. I will trust in Thee faithfully. Thou wilt not suffer that this tyrant shall destroy Thy beautiful world."
Autumn had come, and was boisterously asserting his authority; the weather was dark and gloomy, even in Reinhold's eyes. "The gloomiest and darkest I ever experienced," he said each morning to himself as the same spectacle always presented itself when he opened his window: dark, lowering clouds, trees swaying to and fro, from whose branches blustering winds were stripping the brown leaves and whirling them through the moist, foggy atmosphere across the roofs of the workshops, which looked so drenched and miserable that one would only have expected tombstones to be made there.
"And yet I have got through darker and gloomier days without losing heart," philosophised Reinhold further; "it is not the weather out of doors, it is that whichever way I turn I see people in need and trouble, as if I were on board a ship that must sink shortly and could do nothing to save it, but must sit with my hands before me, and look on idly at the catastrophe." Reinhold could do nothing; of that he had only too soon convinced himself ever since that terrible morning when the General had come to his room, and in the deepest agitation, which even his iron strength could hardly master, had informed him of the conversation he had just had with Herr Schmidt, and its miserable results.
"T made every advance to your uncle," said the General, "which was possible to a man of honour. I offered to him and to your family the reparation which, at least in the eyes of the world, would put everything straight, and would secure to the young people the possibility of that happiness which they have so recklessly pursued. If they will find it in this way, God only knows, but that is their affair, and must be theirs. What I feel about it, what hopes I bury here, what a sacrifice I make of my personal convictions, is a matter that lies between my God and me. May God guide your uncle's heart, that he may put his trust in Him, as I do, in the inward conviction that our own wisdom will not help us here. I have come to you, my dear Schmidt, to say all this to you, not that I wish that you should try to influence your uncle; according to my judgment of him, that would be labour lost; but because I cannot endure the thought of being wrongly judged by a man whom we all think so highly of, and who, besides, is connected with me as a brother soldier, even if only for a short time." Reinhold had, notwithstanding, followed the impulse of his heart, and attempted the impossible. He had been, for the first time since they had been together, harshly repulsed by his uncle, and had been forced to own to himself that neither he nor any other man could persuade the fiery-tempered old man to retract a decision once made "because he must." But when Aunt Rikchen, unable to rest from fear of the terriblesomethingin the air which yet she could not comprehend, found Ferdinanda an hour later lying senseless on the floor of her studio; when the unfortunate girl was raving in high fever, and the family doctor came and went with anxious looks, and soon returned in company with a colleague, and in the evening the two were joined by a third physician, who seemed no less helpless before this strange seizure--then, when Reinhold's first words, "It will kill her!" seemed likely to be so terribly soon fulfilled, he bethought himself of the General's fervent prayer that God might guide his uncle's heart, and sought his uncle, who had not left his room again since the morning, and asked him whether he would really allow his child to die when it was in his power to save her.
"I am convinced that you can save her," he cried; "that a word from you would pierce to her troubled mind through all the horrors of a fevered fancy, and that she would awake to a new life."
"And what would that word be?" asked Uncle Ernst.
"If your heart does not tell you, you would not understand it if I spoke it."
"My heart only tells me that it would be a lie," replied Uncle Ernst; "and as I understand life, no lie will restore it. What life would it be to which she would awake! Life at the side of a man whose courage holds out just so long as the darkness in which he has followed his course of intrigue; who only steps forth from that darkness when a villain tears off his mask, and he cannot endure his father's eye upon his miserable face; who would do what he must to-day, driven on by the reproaches of his conscience and fear of the world's opinion, only to repent it tomorrow from the same fear, and to hint it to her at first in a thousand different ways, and say it at last to her face. Is that a lot for a father to prepare for his child? No, never! Better a thousand times death, if she must needs die. Every man has his own way of looking at life, and this is mine; and no general officer, with I know not what confused ideas of honour and love, and no relation, however dear he may be to me, who in his good-nature would like to accommodate what never can be put straight, will ever teach me another. And if God Himself came and said to me, 'You are wrong,' I should answer, 'I do right in my own eyes,' and no God can demand more of man."
"But you ought not to have urged Ferdinanda to a decision which cannot possibly have come from her heart."
"Are not you attempting something of the same kind at this moment?"
"I have no authority over you, and your mind is not torn by conflicting feelings as Ferdinanda's must have been in that unhappy hour."
"So much the better, that one of us at least should know what he wishes and wills." That had been Uncle Ernst's last word, and he had said it with a calmness that to Reinhold was more terrible than the wildest outburst of passion would have been. And yet not so terrible as the smile with which the stubborn old man a few days later received the news that Ferdinanda was, in the doctor's opinion, out of danger. Reinhold could not forget that smile; it haunted him even in his dreams. He had never seen the like on any human face; he could not even describe it to Justus, to whom he had repeatedly mentioned it, till one day he stopped with a sudden exclamation at a face that stared at him from the wall in a remote corner of the studio.
"Good heavens, Anders, what is this!"
"The mask of the Rhondonini Medusa," said Justus, looking up from his work.
"That was my uncle's smile."
"I dare say it was something like it," said Justus, coming up with his modelling-tool in his hand, "although I cannot quite reconcile Uncle Ernst's beard with the Medusa; but one sees sometimes such diabolical resemblances." Justus's friendship was invaluable to Reinhold in these dark days; when he was almost giving way, the artist's perpetually cheerful temper would keep him up. "I cannot understand you," said Justus; "I certainly have every possible respect for Uncle Ernst's splendid qualities, and I take really a sincere interest in Ferdinanda, to say nothing of Aunt Rikchen, poor soul, who will soon have cried her eyes out; but sympathy and pity and all that sort of thing, like everything else in the world, must have its limits, and if anything of the kind affects my own life and incapacitates me from working--why, then, you see, Reinhold, I say with Count Egmont: 'This is a foreign drop within my veins!' and--out with it! Have you written to the President?"
"Three days ago."
"That's right. Heaven knows how sorry I shall be to lose you; but you have been here too long already. You ought to have a ship's planks under your feet again, and a northeaster whistling in your ears; that would soon blow your melancholy and hypochondria and all that well out of you, and clear your brain and your heart--you may take my word for it!"
"If only it comes to anything," said Reinhold; "I almost fear, as the answer is so long in coming, that my report may have roused bad feelings in the other department as well, as the General prophesied it would."
"Then we must think of something else," answered Justus; "so smart a vessel must not be left to rot in the stagnant waters of a port. For the present you can sit to me occasionally as a model for my bas-relief; not that I want you yet, but one must gather the roses ere they fade. I will take your head now at once, life-size, to be sure of you in any case." Justus set aside all other work, and busied himself over the designs for his bas-reliefs from morning till night, which came only too early for the busy worker. Two of them, the "March out" and the "Battle," were already finished, and the "Ambulance preparations" had made great progress; but what was to be done about the "Return"? Heaven only knew! "And the idea was such a splendid one," cried Justus. "You had been promoted to be an officer meanwhile, and were to be standing at attention in the right corner, your eyes left towards the charming burgomaster's daughter, who, with the wreath in her hand, also turned her eyes right towards the smart lieutenant, while the two elders exchanged the most beautiful sentiments about union, peace, fraternity, and the like. Heaven help us! beautiful sentiments they have exchanged certainly! Those confounded politics! for after all they are at the bottom of all this trouble. Why must that old Berserker go running about upon the barricades in '48! And he calls himself a Liberal now, and bottles up his anger for four and twenty years, and so spoils my splendid idea, for the idea was fairly embodied in those two. Who the devil is to make bas-reliefs from disembodied ideas! I, for one, can't do it; I gladly renounce the doubtful glory of being an inventor; my motto is: 'Seek, and you shall find!' I have held by it, and it has held by me. I have always found just what I wanted for the moment; it has fairly fallen in my way, I must have been blind not to see it; and this time it was just as if Abdallah's wonderful cave had opened before me: 'Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, only the way between them is narrow ... the camels laden almost beyond their strength;' and now--just turn a little more to the right, my good fellow!--'one only, the last, remained to the dervish.' Admirable, my dear Reinhold, but, excepting you, every one of my splendid models has left me in the lurch; Uncle Ernst, the General, Ferdinanda--absolutely impossible! Aunt Rikchen declares that in such a time of trouble she cannot have anything to do with such nonsense--it would be quite wicked!--is not that good? Old Grollmann's face, I positively cannot see through his melancholy wrinkles; our worthy Kreisel, since he has given up Socialism and taken to speculation, has shrivelled up into a mere grasshopper; dear Cilli even has only occasionally the sweet smile with which, gift in hand, she was to grope for the superintendent's table; and among the new workmen I cannot find a single decent model. A parcel of stupid, coarse, sullen faces; and all comes from politics--those confounded politics!" Thus Justus lamented, and between whiles laughed, over his own "splendid" idea, while he kneaded and moulded the wet clay incessantly in his busy hands, whose dexterity seemed miraculous to Reinhold, and then stepped back a few paces, nodding his half-bald head backwards and forwards, and shaking it gravely if he did not think he had succeeded, or whistling softly and contentedly if he was satisfied--which he generally had reason to be--in any case taking up again outwardly the work which he had not for a moment ceased mentally to carry on.
"I never know which to be most amazed at," said Reinhold; "your skill or your industry."
"It is all one," answered Justus; "a lazy artist is a contradiction in terms, at the best he is only a clever amateur. For what is the difference between artists and amateurs? That the amateur has the will and not the power--the will to do what he cannot accomplish; and the artist can accomplish what he will, and wills nothing but what he can accomplish. But to this point--to comparatively perfect mastery over the technicalities of his art and knowledge of its limits--he attains only through unremitting industry, which is no special virtue in him, but rather his very self, his very art. Or, to put it differently, his art is not merely his greatest delight, it is everything to him; he rises with his work as he went to bed with it, and if possible dreams of it too in the night. The world vanishes for him in his work, and it is just, therefore, that he creates a new world in his work. Of course this makes him one-sided, narrows him in a hundred other directions--you must have discovered long ago that I am insufferably stupid and ignorant; but ask the ants, who pursue their way, because it is the shortest, right across the beaten tracks, or the bee who commits murder so jovially in the autumn, and roves about in such idyllic fashion in the spring, or any of the other artistic creatures--the whole tribe of them is stupid, and narrow-minded, and barbarous, but they accomplish something. Look at my Antonio; he will never accomplish anything but hewing a figure out of the marble after a finished model, and working it up till it is ready to receive the last touches at the artist's hands, that is to say, being a first-class workman. Why? Because he has a thousand follies in his head, and in the front rank his own precious, conceited self. And then a feeling heart! Goethe, who was a real, true artist, though he did draw and paint some bad things, had his thoughts about that. The fellow--I don't mean Goethe, but Antonio--was good for nothing during the first days of Ferdinanda's illness, so that I had to send him away from his work altogether. What is Ferdinanda to him? Or, at any rate, what is she to him more than to me? and I have been able to work splendidly all these last days. And Ferdinanda herself! such a pity! She was absolutely standing on the threshold of the sanctuary, and yet she will never enter because she cannot grasp the stern saying over the door: 'Thou shalt have none other gods but me.' She has begun to work again, indeed, since yesterday; but defiance, and despair, and resignation, and all that--it may be all very fine; but it is not the muse. And neither is love the muse of art--let people say what they will. All this yearning of heart to heart, it is all very well, but just let a man try to work with a yearning heart, and see how soon his art gives way to the yearning! The artist must be cool to the centre of his heart. I have kept it so till now, and intend so to continue, and if ever you see the name of Justus Anders in a register of marriages, you need no longer look for it in the golden book of art; you would see a line drawn through the space where it may once have stood in alphabetical order." Reinhold would not allow this, any more than he would accept Justus's theory of the necessary one-sidedness of artists. He saw in the artist rather the complete, perfect man, to whom nothing in humanity was strange; the more than complete man even, who poured out his exuberant wealth, which otherwise must have overwhelmed him, in his works, and thus, beside the real world in which ordinary men dwelt, created for himself a second ideal world. And if Justus maintained that he had never loved, it might be true, although for his part he ventured slightly to doubt the strict truth of his assertion; but even if it were so, this great finder had merely not yet found the right object, and as he boasted of always finding the right object at the right moment, here, too, at the right moment the right object would certainly present itself.
"That is a most unartistic view of the matter, my dear Reinhold!" cried Justus. "We, who according to your ideas are something of demi-gods, know better with what groans and creaks these beautiful creations are brought into life, and that at the best of times, when things go as smoothly as possible, you cannot boil anything without water. And as for love, you certainly have more experience in that, and experience, said Goethe's grey friend at Leipzig, is everything; but very often it is better to be without that experience." And Justus hummed the tune of "No fire, no coals, no ashes," as, with his modelling-tool grasped in both hands, he worked at the forehead of his clay figure.
"Do not give expression to such profane notions this evening at the Kreisels'," said Reinhold.
"Why not? It is the simple truth."
"May be so; but it hurts good little Cilli to hear such things, especially from your mouth."
"Why especially from my mouth?"
"Because she sees in you her ideal."
"In you, I should think."
"Don't talk such nonsense, Justus!"
"Not at all. She fairly raves about you; she talks about nothing but you. Only yesterday she said to me that she hoped to live to see you as happy as you deserved to be, on which I ventured to observe that I considered you as one of the happiest men under the sun, notwithstanding your temporary want of employment, whereupon she shook her pretty head and said, 'The best indeed, but happy?' and shook her head again. Now I only ask you! You not happy!" And Justus whistled the tune of "Happy only is the soul that loves," and exclaimed, "There, now I have got rid of the wrinkles in your forehead, and now we will stop for today, or we shall make a mess of it again, as we did yesterday evening." He sprinkled his figures with water, wrapped Reinhold's half-finished head in wet cloths, and wiped his hands.
"There, I am ready!"
"Won't you at least shut your desk?" said Reinhold, pointing to a worm-eaten old piece of furniture, on and in which Justus's letters and other papers were wont to lie about.
"What for?" said Justus. "No one is likely to touch the rubbish. Antonio will put it all in order; Antonio is order itself. Antonio!" The other workmen had already left the studio; only Antonio was still busying himself in the twilight.
"Put these things a little tidy, Antonio. Come!" The two young men left the studio.
"Do not you leave too much in Antonio's hands?" asked Reinhold.
"How so?"
"I do not trust that Italian; so little indeed that I have repeatedly fancied that the fellow must have had a hand in betraying Ferdinanda." Justus laughed. "Really, my dear Reinhold, I begin to think that Cilli was right, and that you are an unhappy man! How can a happy man torment himself with such horrid ideas? I will just run up and make myself tidy. You go on, I will follow you in five minutes." Justus was just hastening away, when the door of Ferdinanda's studio opened, and a lady came out dressed entirely in black, and muffled in a thick black veil. She hesitated for a moment when she saw the two, and then with hasty step and bent head passed them on her way to the yard. The two friends thought at the first moment that it was Ferdinanda herself; but Ferdinanda was taller, and this was not her figure or walk.
"But who else could it have been?" asked Reinhold.
"I do not know," said Justus. "Perhaps a model--there are shy models. I hope at any rate that it was one. It would be the best sign that she was going to work again, that is to say to come to her senses." Justus sprang up the steps which led to his apartment. Reinhold continued on his way. As he turned the corner of the building, the black figure was just disappearing through the entrance to the house. Antonio also, who had begun to tidy Justus's desk as soon as the two friends had left the studio, had observed the lady in black as she glided past the window. He threw the papers which he held in his hand into the desk, and was about to rush out, but remembered that he could not follow her in his working dress, and stopped with much annoyance. The lady in black had been with Ferdinanda at the same hour yesterday, but as the studio was full, he had not been able to make his observations through the door. She was no model--he knew better than that! But who could it be, if not an emissary from the man he hated? Perhaps she would come for the third time at a more convenient hour. He must find out! He returned to the desk. "Bah!" said he, "what is there to be found here? accounts, orders--the old story! And what use is it to listen to their conversation? Always the same empty chatter. I can't think why he wants to know what the Captain talks about to the maestro!" He knew that Ferdinanda was no longer in her study, but yet his gleaming eyes remained fixed on her door as he sat here brooding in the twilight.
"I will do everything that he commands. He is very wise, very powerful, and very wealthy; but what good can he do here? Is not she now even more unhappy than she was before? And if she should ever find out that it was I--but the signer is right there, one thing always remains to me--the last, best of all--revenge!"
Latterly, while Ferdinanda still kept her bed, Uncle Ernst hardly left his room, and the Schmidt family circle therefore was to a great extent broken up, the two friends had divided their evenings between it and the Kreisels pretty regularly as they said, or very irregularly as Aunt Rikchen said. Reinhold was forced to agree with his aunt, and attempted no further excuses, as he did not want to tell any untruths, and could not acknowledge the true reason. The real truth was that his aunt's perpetual complaints threatened to destroy his last remnant of cheerfulness, while on the contrary he found the comfort and consolation that he so greatly needed in the atmosphere of sunshine which the sweet blind girl diffused around her. Latterly, indeed, even this sunshine had been a little clouded. The two friends had a suspicion, which they did not however impart to the poor girl, that the eccentric old gentleman, having made up his mind, as he said, that he could no longer with honour remain a Socialist, had sacrificed his dislike to speculation to the darling wish of his heart, to provide for Cilli after his own death, and had been speculating eagerly with the scanty means that he had toilsomely scraped together in the course of years. He was very mysterious about it indeed, and denied it roundly when Justus laughingly taxed him with it; but Justus would not be deceived, and even thought he could gather, from a casual expression the other had let fall, that it was the doubtful star of the Berlin-Sundin Railway to which the old man had confided the fragile bark of his fortunes. It seemed some confirmation of this opinion that latterly, when the almost worthless shares had become, in consequence of the new and dazzling prospectus, an object of the wildest speculation, and had consequently risen to double their value, the old gentleman's cheerfulness had returned also, and he had even ventured upon some of the dry witticisms which he only uttered when he was in the brightest spirits. Cilli said that now everything went well with her, and Reinhold, as she asserted this with her sweet smile, tried to stifle another and much worse anxiety--an anxiety which he had once hinted to Justus, whereupon the latter had replied in his careless fashion: "Nonsense! Love is a weakness, angels have no weaknesses; Cilli is an angel, and so--basta!" He found Cilli alone in the modest little sitting-room, in the act of arranging the tea-things on the little round table in front of the hard, faded old sofa. She performed such small household duties with a confidence which would have quite deceived a stranger as to her infirmity, and with a grace which always had a fresh charm for Reinhold. She would not permit any assistance either. "It is cruel," said she, "not to let me do the little that I can do." So he sat now in the sofa corner, which was always his place--the other belonged to her father when he came in from the office--and looked on as she came and went with her gliding step, and as often as she returned to the table seemed smilingly to bid him welcome again and again.
"Where is Justus!" asked she.
"He has just gone to dress."
"How far has he got with you?"
"I shall be finished to-morrow, or the day after."
"Then it will be my turn; I am looking forward to it so--I mean to the portrait. I should so like to know what I look like. However often I do so"--she drew her soft finger slowly along her profile--"and that is just like looking in the glass, yet you never know how you look till a great artist shows it to you in your portrait. Justus is going to do me in life-size too."
"But he might have given you that small satisfaction long ago."
"It is not a small thing, even though he does work so wonderfully quick," answered Cilli eagerly; "every hour, every minute is precious to him; he owes them all to his work. Now that he can make use of me for his work, it is different of course."
"Do you know then, dear Cilli, what we all look like?"
"Perfectly; you are a tall man, with curly hair and beard, and a broad forehead, and blue eyes. Justus is not so tall, is he?"
"He is a little shorter, dear Cilli."
"But only a very little," Cilli went on triumphantly; "and his hair is not so thick, is it?" The last words were said with some hesitation.
"Not at the temples, dear Cilli."
"Only not at the temples, of course!" said Cilli quickly; "but his great beauty is in his eyes--great, flashing artist's eyes, which can take in a whole world! Oh, I know what you both look like, and my father too! I could draw his portrait!" She laughed happily and then suddenly became grave.
"That is why I am distressed, too, when the faces I love are not cheerful. Justus's face is always cheerful, but then he is an artist, and can only live in sunshine; my father, too, has recovered his old cheerfulness, and now you must return to what you were at first--do you remember?"
"Indeed I do, dear Cilli. So many things have happened since then; you know what I mean. They have troubled me, and trouble me still. And then Justus is right, I am an idler; I must manage to get to work again."
"How did the General receive your work?" Reinhold looked up in astonishment; there was nothing surprising indeed in the question. He had mentioned the subject, as he had nearly all, excepting one, the most important--often enough at the tea-table here; but the tone in which Cilli had asked was peculiar.
"How do you mean, dear Cilli?" he asked in return.
"I only wanted to remind you that you had not been idle even here," said Cilli. She was standing opposite to him at the other side of the tea-table, and the light of the lamp fell full upon her pure features, on which was expressed some uneasiness. She seemed to be listening for the step of her father or Justus on the stairs. Then, as everything remained still, she felt her way round the table, sat down on the edge of the sofa, and said, while a deep colour suffused her whole face: "I did not tell you the truth; it was for another reason that I asked you. I have something else to ask you--a very great, very bold request--which you will perhaps grant me, if you are sure, as you ought to be, that it is not idle curiosity that prompts me, but heartfelt sympathy in your weal and woe."
"Tell me, Cilli; I believe there is nothing in the world that I would deny you."
"Well then, is it Elsa von Werben?"
"Yes, dear Cilli."
"Thank God!" Cilli sat still, with her hands in her lap; and Reinhold was silent too; he felt that he could not have spoken at the moment without tears. Cilli knew that he was not ashamed of his confession, but she had to a certain degree forced it from him, and as if in apology, she said: "You must not be angry with me. Good as Justus is, one cannot confide such things in him. I think he would hardly understand it. And you have no one else here excepting me; and I thought perhaps it would not be so hard for you if you could speak openly of your feelings even to blind Cilli." Reinhold took her hand, and carried it to his lips.
"I am as grateful to you, dear Cilli, as a wounded man is when balm is poured upon his wounds, and I know no one in whom I would rather confide than in you, purest, kindest, best!"
"I know that you like me and trust me," said Cilli, warmly returning the pressure of Reinhold's hand; "and I am well punished for my cowardice in having, notwithstanding, kept silence so long; for, only think, Reinhold, I believed at first----"
"What did you believe, dear Cilli?"
"I believed at first that it was Ferdinanda; and I was very, very unhappy about it, for Ferdinanda may be as beautiful as you all say, and as talented, but you would never have been happy with her. You are so kind and so good-tempered, and she is--I will not say ill-tempered, but haughty. Believe me, Reinhold, I feel it, as a beggar feels whether what is given him is from kindness or only to get rid of him. I have never put myself in her way, God knows; but He knows also that she has never gone a step out of her way to say one of those kind words to me which fall so readily from your lips, because your heart is overflowing with them. For some time, too, I trembled for Justus, till I learned to understand his nature, and saw that an artist--inasmuch as he is unlike other men--cannot love either like other men. But you, with your tender, loving heart, how should you not love--and love immeasurably--and be immeasurably unhappy if your love is misplaced! I have said this often to Justus when we were talking about you--at first; now I do not do so any more, for he chatters about everything that comes into his head, and I have observed how carefully you have guarded your secret."
"That I have indeed!" cried Reinhold. "I might almost say from myself; and I cannot think how you have discovered it."
"It seems almost a miracle, does it not?" said Cilli; "and yet it is not one, if you seeing people knew how well the blind hear, how they pay attention to every trifle, and to the tone in which you mention a particular name, as you bring it in at first shamefacedly, and then a little more boldly, as soon as you feel secure, till at last all your conversation is full of the music of the loved name, as in the East the dawn is filled with the name of Allah, cried by the Muezzins from the roof of the minaret. And ah! what sadness there often was in the tone in which you spoke it! What trembling hope of joy breathed in it, when you told me the other day that you were going to spend the evening with her, to pass hours in her company at that large party! They were your only happy hours, my poor Reinhold, for the very next day fell the frost upon the young green shoots, and since then the beloved name has never passed your lips. Are you then quite in despair now?"
"No, dear Cilli," answered Reinhold; "I only see a happiness which I thought I might grasp with my hand, as a child thinks it may grasp a star, vanish from me in grey distance." And Reinhold related everything from the beginning, and how he was certain, though she had never spoken a word of love to him, not even on that delightful evening, that she understood him; and that so noble and high-minded a creature could never trifle with a man's silent, respectful devotion, and therefore the favour with which she distinguished him--her kind words and friendly looks--could not be mere trifling, and if not love was yet a feeling that under happier circumstances might have blossomed into true, perfect love. But circumstances could hardly be more unfavourable than they were at present. So melancholy an event as that which had occurred would in any other case have united the other members of the two families in sympathy; in fact it could only have occurred between two families, the heads of which were so utterly opposed in their social views as were the General and Uncle Ernst. He was himself quite independent of his uncle, and should always assert that independence, particularly in his love-affairs; but Elsa was most especially the child of the house, the daughter of a father she so justly and highly honoured, and he feared the reaction which such an event might produce upon the General, who otherwise--from affection for his daughter and regard for him--might perhaps have sacrificed his class-prejudices, but now--and who could blame him?--would intrench himself doubly and trebly behind these very prejudices, which in his eyes were none. And there was another thing I From some remarks made by the General, at the dinner-table at Golmberg, he had taken the Werbens for one of the many poor noble families; and now Elsa suddenly appeared to him as a wealthy heiress, to whom, if she were really prepared to sacrifice her inheritance to her love, as would be necessary, he had nothing to offer but a faithful heart, and such a modest livelihood as a man like him could at best provide. Under these circumstances every prospect seemed so closed to him, every hope so crushed and forbidden to him by the feelings of simple propriety, that there could be no question of wooing on his part, and that it would require a positive miracle to change for the better the present miserable state of affairs. Cilli's face had reflected every sentiment that Reinhold expressed, as the crystal surface of a calm mountain lake reflects the light and shadows of the sky. But now the last shadow faded before the sunny smile with which she said:
"Love is always a miracle, Reinhold; why should not a second happen? Did you not tell me that Elsa understood and did not resent the silent language of your eyes? And even if, as I suppose, the late sad events have been concealed from her, she must have known the conditions of the inheritance, and also her father's character and views, and yet she had no fear and saw nothing impossible in it, but believed, and so surely still believes, that all things work for the best with true love."
"A pious belief, Cilli, such as well beseems a woman, but very ill beseems a man who is expected and rightly to understand and respect the world and the laws which regulate the world."
"Understand!" said Cilli, shaking her head, "yes! But respect them! How can any one respect what is so senseless, so godless, as that must necessarily be which will not allow he union of two hearts that God has formed for each other? What God has joined together let not man put asunder!"
"Ferdinanda and Ottomar might say that for themselves too, dear Cilli."
"Never!" cried Cilli. "God knows nothing of a love which believes in nothing, not even in itself, and therefore bears nothing: no delay, no remonstrance, however just; no obstacle, however unavoidable; and proves thereby that it is itself nothing but pride, arrogance, and adoration of self. No, Reinhold, you must not do yourself the injustice of comparing your modest, noble love, with that dark, unholy passion! And you ought not either to have such a difficult road before you as those unhappy people. Your path must be free and light as your love; you owe that to yourself and to the woman you love."
"Tell me what I ought to do, Cilli. I will believe in you as if an angel spoke to me!"
"Only be yourself, Reinhold; neither more nor less. You, who have so often opposed a bold front to the merciless, raging elements, must not stoop your head before your fellow-men; you must, when the hour comes, as it perhaps soon will, speak and act as your pure brave heart prompts you. Will you?" She put out her hand to Reinhold.
"I will," said Reinhold, taking her hand.
"And, Reinhold, as surely as these eyes will never see the light of the sun, will that sun shine on your path, and you will live to be a joy to yourself and a blessing to mankind."
"Good gracious, Cilli!" said Justus, opening the door and standing still on the threshold; "are you celebrating Christmas in November?"
"Yes, Justus!" cried Reinhold; "Christmas, for Christmas it is when the heavens open and the messengers of love come down to announce peace."
"Then," said Justus, shutting the door, "I strongly recommend to them my Memorial Committee, which will not hold its peace, but is always plaguing me with suggestions of which each one is wilder and more impossible than the last. I have just found another letter four pages long, which I have answered in as great a heat as it put me into. And now, Cilli, give me a cup of tea with a little rum in it to cool me, for such--ah! here comes Papa Kreisel! and in the best spirits, as I can see by the twinkle of his eye. Berlin-Sundins have gone up another half per cent.; now we shall have a jolly evening!" And a jolly evening it was, and when Reinhold went to his room late at night, he found a letter from the President, containing the official announcement that the Minister approved of his appointment, and he must present himself at once at the place in question, as he must enter upon his duties on the 1st of December at latest. Reinhold let the letter slip from his hand musingly.
"The hour may soon come, she said, and here it is already; it shall find me worthy of her who is purity and truth personified."