A Sister's Love Part 6

"Klaus, what a question! Of course! Please take the necessary steps at once, and have the child come."

"The child, Anna Maria? Why, I think she must have reached the limits of childhood now!"

"That doesn't matter, Klaus. Then I will instruct her in housekeeping, and all sorts of things which she may find useful in her life."

"I thank you sincerely, Anna Maria," he replied; "I hope you will take pleasure in the girl." He said this with a sigh of relief, which did not escape Anna Maria's ear.

"You act exactly as if you had been afraid of me, Klaus," she remarked, with a pa.s.sing smile; "as if I should not always wish anything that seemed desirable to you."

"Just because I know that, Anna Maria," he said, grasping her hands affectionately, "I wish, too, that you might do it gladly, that it might be no sacrifice to you----"

"I am really and truly glad the child is coming," she said honestly. And so they stood opposite each other in the forsaken lumber-room; it was now flooded with sunshine, and the two strong figures stood out from a golden background. The shadows of the young leaves about the window played lightly over them, and the call of the thrush echoed from the woods far away without.

"A sacrifice!" he had said, and yet they had each already made the greatest sacrifice of which a human heart is capable, and each thought it unknown to the other. And at their feet rocked the heavy cradle, moved by Anna Maria's dress, and it rocked on, long after the two had left the room.

CHAPTER VI.

Thirty years had pa.s.sed away, and on a stormy autumn evening a young couple sat before a crackling fire, in Butze Manor-house--she, a slender, girlish figure, fair, with pleasant blue eyes; he, tall, or seeming so from a certain delicacy of form, and also fair; but a pair of bright brown eyes contrasted strangely with his light hair.

Without, the wind was raging about the old house, as it had done many years before, and sang of past times; now and then it set up a howl of furious rage, and then sounded again in low, long-drawn, plaintive tones, as if singing a long-forgotten love-song.

The young wife in the comfortable easy-chair had been listening to it a long time; now she said in a clear voice:

"Klaus, this would be just the evening to read aloud the journal."

He started up out of a deep revery. "What journal, my child!"

"That little packet of papers that we found the other day, in rummaging about in Aunt Rosamond's writing-desk."

He nodded. "Yes, we will do it," he said, "it will be a bit of family history, perhaps about my parents. I was just thinking how little I know of them, and it makes me sad. Mother Anna Maria makes her account so short and scanty, as if she did not like to talk about it, and whenever she mentions her only brother her eyes grow moist. Come, sit down on the sofa with me; I will get the papers."

He rose, went to an old-fashioned desk, and took a little packet of papers from the middle drawer. The young wife had meanwhile taken up a bit of dainty needlework, and now they sat, side by side, on the sofa, before the lamp, and he unfolded the sheets.

"What a pretty old handwriting," he said. "See, Marie!"

She nodded. "One can make quite a picture of the writer from that--small, delicate, and good, as loving as the first words sound."

"Yes," he replied, "she was good and kind. I remember her so distinctly yet. She used to give me sugarplums and colored pictures, and at Christmas she used to come as Knecht Ruprecht, and I should certainly have been frightened if I had not recognized Aunt Rosamond by her voice and limp."

"Ah, but please read, Klaus," begged the young wife impatiently; and he began obediently:

"My dear Anna Maria has driven away again with little Klaus----"

"That is you!" interrupted the young wife, laughing.

He nodded; his fine eyes gleamed softly. "But now be still," he said; "for Aunt Rosamond surely never thought such a disturber of the peace would ever put her nose in here."

"You bad man! Give me a kiss for that!"

"That, too?" he sighed comically. "There, but be quiet now!" And he began again:

"My dear Anna Maria has driven away again with little Klaus. It has become very quiet at Butze, not a sound in the great house; even Brockelmann is no longer heard, for since last winter she has taken to wearing felt slippers. All the rooms down-stairs are shut up, and it is melancholy. Anna Maria consoles me, to be sure, by saying that there will be life enough here again when the child has grown large; but, dear me, by that time I shall have long been lying in the garden yonder! Oh, I wish I might live to hear merry voices ringing again through the house at Butze, and see the rooms down-stairs occupied; but I do not believe it possible. Well, I must not allow myself to be overpowered by the loneliness and tediousness about me; I sit at my desk and will try to narrate the late events here, in regular order. So much has happened here; the stories rush to my mind all confused, but I should like to recall the past in proper order.

"If I only knew how to begin! I have already cut three goose-quills to pieces! I look out of the window, the trees are clad in the first green, the sky is blue, only a dark line of cloud rising over the barn yonder.

It is warm and sultry, as before an approaching thunder-storm, and now another spring day rises before my eyes, and now I know.

"It was a ninth of May, just as damp and sultry as to-day. Anna Maria came in to me. My room was up-stairs here then, on the same story, the same big flowered furniture stood here, and I was the same infirm, limping old creature, only fresher and brighter; I laughed more than any one in the house in those days. I can see Anna Maria before me so distinctly, as she stood there by the spinet in her every-day gray dress, with a black taffeta ap.r.o.n over it, and the bunch of keys at her belt.

"'Aunt Rosamond, will you look at the room which I have been getting ready for the child?' she asked, and I rose, and limped along beside her down the hall as far as the large, dark room. I never could bear the room, and to-day, as I entered it, it oppressed me like a nightmare. To be sure, dazzling white pillows stood up beneath the green curtains of the canopy, and a spray of elder on the toilet-table sent its fragrance through the room; but neither this nor the sultry air which came in at the window could improve the damp, cold atmosphere, or convey any degree of comfort to the room.

"'You ought to have had it warmed, Anna Maria,' said I, with a little shiver, 'and had that unpleasant picture taken away.' And I pointed to the half-length portrait of a young woman looking boldly and saucily forth into the world, with a pair of sparkling black eyes, who was called in the family the 'Mischief-maker.' According to an old, half-forgotten story, she had come by her nickname from her black eyes having been the cause of a duel between two Hegewitz brothers, in which one was killed by his brother's hand. A Hegewitz herself, and lingering at Butze on a visit, she had deliberately married another man. How, when, and where, it happened, the story did not tell; but her portrait had remained at Butze, and hung from time immemorial in this room.

"'Ah! let the picture stay: the child does not know whom it represents,'

replied Anna Maria. 'I think it is quite comfortable and pleasant here, Aunt Rosamond, with the view into the garden.'

"Anna Maria had, literally, no idea of comfort, so her remark did not surprise me. She lacked that charming feminine faculty of making all the surroundings pleasing with a few flowers or a bit of graceful drapery.

'The poor thing,' thought I, 'coming from Berlin--to this dreary solitude!'

"Anna Maria had suddenly turned around to me, and her face, usually so austere, was glowing with tenderness. 'Aunt Rosamond,' she said, 'do you know, I am really glad the little Susanna Mattoni is coming!'

"'And I am glad for you, Anna Maria,' I replied, 'for you need a friend.'

"'I need no friend,' she replied bluntly, 'and how could that young thing be a companion for me? She is a child, a poor orphaned child, in need of love, and I will--' She broke off, and a hot blush spread over her face.

"'You are still young yourself, Anna Maria,' I interposed, 'and I think she must be seventeen years old.'

"'Years do not make the age, Aunt Rosamond, but the soul, the nature, the experiences. If G.o.d will, she shall find in me rather a mother, for as a companion I am worth nothing. I should have to conform her to myself--oh, never!'

"I knew that Anna Maria's whole heart, usually so coldly closed, had opened to receive a fatherless and motherless creature, to love it, in her way, with all her might--in her way, indeed, and that was not understood by every one. How much time have I spent in trying to fathom that nature, which apparently lay open to every eye, against whose sharp corners and angles almost every one ran, who had anything to do with her.

"'Has Klaus gone to meet your guest?' I asked.

"'No, he rode out into the fields. Why should he?' she rejoined. 'Old Maier drove away to S---- yesterday, and I think every second she must come. I only hope it will be before the approaching thunder-storm breaks!'

"The unpleasant stillness before the threatening storm pervaded the outside world. I went up to Anna Maria at the open window and looked at the black clouds looming up in the horizon. My eyes roved beyond the trees in the garden, out into the country; strangely near seemed the dark forests and Dambitz with its clumsy tower.

"'How near Dambitz looks,' I remarked, 'and it is really so far away.'

"Anna Maria turned quickly. 'Very far,' she said listlessly.

"'Sturmer still stays away,' I began, designedly. I felt compa.s.sion for the man whom an incomprehensible whim of a girl had driven away into the world, just when he had hoped to find a home and heart; I had once, for the s.p.a.ce of half an hour, imagined that she loved him.

"I received no answer, but about the girl's lips there lay such an expression of pride and defiant resolution that I resolved never to mention that name again. She gazed fixedly at the dark clouds, and at last said, in a wearily oppressed tone: 'Is not that the rumbling of a carriage?'

"'Perhaps the thunder,' I replied. But before we had closed the window and I had looked around the room again, Brockelmann stood, with flushed face, before Anna Maria. 'Gracious Fraulein, she is--they are here--G.o.d in Heaven!'