Gertrude's Marriage Part 3

"The evenings are getting very long now--did you know, Jenny, that an opera troupe is coming here?"

Jenny answered in the affirmative, and added that she must go and dress.

"Good night," she cried, merrily, from the door; "we shall not meet again to-day."

"Good night, mamma," said Gertrude also.

"Are you going down to Jenny?" asked Mrs. Baumhagen.

The girl shook her head.

"What are you going to do all the evening?"

"I don't know, mamma. I have all sorts of things to do. Perhaps I shall read."

"Ah! Well, good night, my child."

She waved her hand and Gertrude went away. She took off her silk dress when she reached her room and exchanged it for a soft cashmere, then she went into her pretty sitting-room. It was already twilight and the lamps were being lighted in the street below. She stood in the bow-window and watched one flame leap out after the other and the windows of the houses brighten. Even the old apple-woman, under the shelter of the statue of Roland, hung out her lantern under her gigantic white umbrella. Gertrude knew all this so well; it had been just the same when she was a tiny girl, and there was no change--only here inside it was all so different--so utterly different.

Where were those happy evenings when she had sat here beside her father--where was the old comfort and happiness? They must have hidden themselves away in his coffin, for ever since that dreadful day when they had carried her father away, it had been cold and empty in the house and in the young girl's heart. He had been so ill, so melancholy; it was fortunate that it had happened, so people said to the widow, who was almost wild in her pa.s.sionate grief, but she had gone on a journey at once with Jenny, and had spent the winter in Nice. Gertrude would not go with them on any account. Her eyes, which had looked on such misery, could not look out upon G.o.d's laughing world,--her shattered nerves could not bear the gay whirl of such a life. She had stayed behind with an old aunt--Aunt Louise slept almost all day, when she was not eating or drinking coffee, and the young girl had learned all the horrors of loneliness. She had been ill in body and mind, and when her mother and sister had returned, she learned that one may be lonely even in company, and lonely she had remained until the present day.

Urged by a longing for affection, she had again and again tried to find excuses for her mother, and to adapt herself to her mode of life. She had allowed herself to be drawn into the whirl of pleasure into which the pleasure-loving woman had plunged so soon as her time of mourning was over. She had tried to persuade herself that concerts, b.a.l.l.s, and all the gayeties of society really gave her pleasure and satisfied her.

But her sense of right rebelled against this self-deception. She began to ponder on the vacuity of all about her, on this and that conversation, on the whole whirl around her, and she grew less able to comprehend it. She could not understand how people could find so much amus.e.m.e.nt in things that seemed to her not worth a thought. The art of fluttering through life, skimming the cream of all its excitements as Jenny did, she did not understand. To wear the most elegant costume at a ball, to stay at the dearest hotels on a journey, to be celebrated for giving the finest dinners--all that was not worth thinking about.

Once she had asked if she might not read aloud in the evenings they spent alone, as she used to do when her father was alive. After receiving permission she had come in with a radiant face, bringing "Ekkehard," the last book which her father had given her. With flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, she had read on and on, but as she chanced to look up there sat Jenny, looking through the last number of the "Journal of Fashion," while her mother was sound asleep. She did not say a word but she never read aloud again.

The large tears ran suddenly down her cheeks. One of those moments had suddenly come over her again, when she stretched out her arms despairingly after some human soul that would understand her, that would love her a little, only a little, for herself alone. She had grown so distrustful that she ascribed all kindness from strangers to her wealth and the position which her family held in society. She was quite conscious that she was repellent and unamiable, designedly so--no one should know how poor she really felt. It was not necessary for them to know that she wrung her hands and asked, "What shall I do? What do I live for?" She had inherited from her father a delight in work, a need for being of use--every responsible person feels a desire to be happy and to make others happy--but she felt her life so great a burden, it was so shallow, so distasteful, so full of petty interests.

She quickly dried her tears and turned; the door had opened and an old servant entered.

"You are forgetting your tea again, Miss Gertrude," she began, reproachfully. "It is all ready in the dining-room. I have brought in the tea so it will cool a little, but you must come now."

The young girl thanked her pleasantly and followed her. She returned in a very short time, nothing tasted good when she was so alone. She lighted the lamp and took a book and read. It had grown still gradually outside in the street, quarter after quarter struck from St. Benedict's tower, until it was eleven o'clock. A carriage drove up--her mother was coming home.

Gertrude closed her book, it was bedtime. The hall-door closed, steps went past Gertrude's door--but no, some one was coming in.

Mrs. Baumhagen still wore her black Spanish lace mantilla over her head. She only wished to ask her daughter what all this was about the christening this afternoon. The pastor's wife had told her a story of a curious kind of G.o.dfather; the pastor had come home full of it.

"Jenny did not come," explained the young girl, "and a strange gentleman offered to stand."

"But how horribly pushing," cried the excited little woman. "You should have drawn back, child--who knows what sort of a person he may be."

"I don't know him, mamma. But whoever he may be, he was so very good; he never supposed, I am sure, that his kindness could be misunderstood."

"There," cried Mrs. Baumhagen, "you see it is always so with you--you are so easily imposed upon by that sort of thing, Gertrude,--really I get very anxious about you. Did you know that Baron von Lowenberg--I remember the name now--is a distant connection of the ducal house of A.? Mrs. von S---- knows the whole family, they are charming people.

But I will not influence you, I am only telling you this by the way.

Sophie tells me an invitation has come from the Stadtrathin for to-morrow. One never has a day to one's self. You will come too? It is about the Society festival; you young girls will have something to do.

"Jenny had a light still," she continued, without noticing her daughter's silence. "Arthur brought home Carl Roben, who came for his young wife, and Lina was just coming up out of the cellar with champagne.--I beg you will not tell any one about that scene in the church to-day; I have asked the pastor's wife to be silent too.

"Good night, my child. Of course the tea wasn't fit to drink at Mrs.

S---- as usual."

"Good-night, mamma," replied Gertrude. She took the lamp and looked at her father's picture once more, then she went to bed. She awoke suddenly out of a half-slumber; she had heard the voice so distinctly that she had heard in the church to-day for the first time. She sat up with her heart beating quickly. No, what she had experienced today had been no dream. Like a ray of sunshine fell that friendly act of the unknown into this world of egotism and heartlessness. And then she staid long awake.

CHAPTER III.

The storms of late autumn came on among the mountains, heavy showers of rain came down from the gray flying clouds and beat upon the dead leaves of the forest and against the windows of the dwelling-houses.

Frank Linden sat at his writing-table in the room he had fitted up for himself in the second story, and his eyes wandered from the denuded branches in the garden to the mountains opposite. His surroundings were as comfortable as it is possible for a bachelor's room to be--books and weapons, a bright fire in the stove, good pictures on the walls, the delicate perfume of a fine cigar, and yet in spite of all this the expression on his handsome face was by no means a contented one.

He thrust aside a great sheet full of figures and took up instead a sheet of writing-paper, on which he began rapidly to write:--

"My Dear Old Judge:

"How you would scoff at me if you could see me in my present downcast mood. It is raining outside, and inside a flood of vexatious thoughts is streaming over me. I have found out that playing at farming is a pleasure only when one has a large purse that he can call his own. The expenses are getting too much for me; everything has to be repaired or renewed. Well, all this is true, but I do not complain, for in other ways I have the greatest pleasure out of it. I cannot describe to you how really poetic a walk through these autumn woods is, which I manage to take almost daily with old Juno, thanks to the permission of the royal forester, with whom I have made friends.

"And how delightful is the home coming beneath my own roof!

"But you, most prosaic of all mortals, are probably thinking only about venison steaks or broiled field-fares, and you only know the mood of the wild huntsman from hearsay.

"But I wanted to tell you how right you were when you declared of Wolff: '_Hic niger est!_ Be on your guard against this man--he is a scoundrel!' Perhaps that would be saying too much, but at any rate he is troublesome. He sent me yesterday a ticket to a concert and wrote on a bit of paper: 'Seats 38 to 40 taken by the Baumhagen family--I got No. 37.' Then he added that the Baumhagens were the most distinguished and the wealthiest of the patricians in the city--evidently those who play first fiddle there.

"You know what my opinion is concerning millionaires--anything to escape their neighborhood.

"Well, in short, I was vexed and sent him back the ticket with the remark that I was the most unmusical person in the world. He has already made several attacks of that nature on me, so I suppose there must be a daughter.

"And now to come at length to the aim of this letter--you know that Wolff has a heavy mortgage on Niendorf, at a very high rate of interest. I simply cannot pay it, and wish to take up the mortgage; would your sister be willing to take it at a moderate rate? I am ready to give you any information.

"And what more shall I tell you? By the way, the old aunt--you did her great injustice; I never saw a more inoffensive, more contented creature than this old woman. A niece who comes to Niendorf every year on a visit, and whom she seems very fond of, her tame goldfinch, and her artificial flowers make up her whole world. She asked quite anxiously if I would let her have her room here till she died. I promised it faithfully. She has been telling me a good many things about my uncle's last years. He must have been very eccentric. Wolff was with him every day, playing euchre with him and the schoolmaster.

He died at the card-table, so to speak. The old lady told me in a sepulchral voice that he actually died with clubs and diamonds in his hands. He had just played out the ace and said, 'There is a bomb for you!' and it was all over. I believe she felt a little horror of this endings herself. I am going now into the city in spite of wind and rain to make a few calls. I have got to do it sooner or later. I shall take the steward with me; he will bring home a pair of farm-horses that he bought the other day. Perhaps I may happen to stumble on my unknown little G.o.dmother that I wrote you about the other day; so far luck has not favored me."

He added greetings and his signature, and half an hour later he was on his way to the city in faultless visiting costume.

Arrived in the hotel he inquired for a number of addresses, then began with a sigh to do his duty according to that extraordinary custom which Mrs. Grundy prescribes as necessary in "good society," that is, to call upon perfect strangers at mid-day and exchange a few shallow phrases and then to escape as quickly as possible. Thank Heaven! No one was at home to-day although it was raining in torrents. From a sort of natural opposition he left the Baumhagens to the last; he belonged to that cla.s.s to whom it is only necessary to praise a thing greatly in order to create a strong dislike to it.

Just as he was on the point of making this visit, he met Mr. Wolff.

"You are going to the Baumhagens?" he asked, evidently agreeably surprised. "There--there, that house with the bow-window. I wish you good luck, Mr. Linden!"

Frank had a sharp answer on his lips but the little man had disappeared. But a woman's figure stepped back hastily from the bow-window above him.

"Very sorry," said the old servant-maid. "Mrs. Baumhagen is not at home." He received the same answer in the lower story although he heard the sounds of a Chopin waltz.

He heard an explanation of this in the hotel at dinner. A great ball was to take place that evening, and such a festival naturally required the most extensive preparations on the part of the feminine portion of society; on such a day neither matron nor maiden was visible. Nothing else was spoken of but this ball, and some of the gentlemen kindly invited him to be present; he would find some pretty girls there.