Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories Part 13

"Why will you not believe me, darling?" some one was saying. A great rush of emotion--fear, anguish, hatred, shook my very soul. "Your scepticism would make Tyndall tear his hair. Angels have no business to be so sceptical. You are always doubting me, always darkening my life by your irrational fears."

"But, Victor," answered another voice, which was none other than Hildegard's, "he is certainly a very good man, and would not tell me anything he believed to be untrue. Why, then, did he warn me so solemnly against you? Even though I love you, I cannot help feeling that there is something in your past which you hide from me."

"If you will listen to that white-livered hypocrite, it is useless for me to try to convince you. But, if you must know it,--though, mind you, I tell you this only because you compel me,--I once interfered, because my conscience forced me to do so, in a very disgraceful love-affair of his in Denmark. He has hated me ever since, and is now taking his vengeance. I will give you the details some other time.

Now, are you satisfied?"

"No, Victor, no. I am not. It is not because I have been listening to others, that I torment you with these ungrateful questions. Sometimes a terrible dread comes over me, and though my heart rebels against it, I cannot conquer it. I feel as if some dark memory, some person, either living or dead, were standing between us, and would ever keep you away from me. It is terrible, Victor, but I feel it even now."

"And then all my love, my first and only abiding pa.s.sion, my life, which I would gladly lay down at your feet--all goes for naught, merely because a foolish dream has taken possession of you. Ah, you are ill, my darling, you are nervous."

"No, no, do not kiss me. Not to-night, Victor, not to-night."

The horrible discovery had completely stunned me. I stood as if spell-bound, and could neither stir nor utter a sound. But a sudden rustling of the leaves within broke through the torpor of my senses, and, with three great strides, I stood at the entrance to the arbor.

Dannevig, instantly recognizing me, slipped dexterously out, and in the next moment I heard him leaping over the fence, and running away over the crisp sand. Miss Hildegard stood still and defiant before me in the twilight, and the audible staccato of her breath revealed to my ears the agitation which the deepening shadows hid from my eyes. An overwhelming sense of compa.s.sion came over me, as for one who had sustained a mortal hurt that was beyond the power of healing. Alas, that simplicity and uprightness of soul, and the boasted womanly intuitions, should be such poor safeguards against the wiles of the serpent! And yet, I knew that to argue with her at this moment would be worse than vain.

"Fraulein," I said, walking close up to her, and laying my hand lightly on her arm, "with all my heart I deplore this."

"Pray, do not inconvenience yourself with any such superfluous emotion," she answered, in a tone, the forced hauteur of which was truly pathetic. "I wish to hear no accusations of Mr. Dannevig from your mouth. What he does not choose to tell me himself, I will hear from no one else."

"I have not volunteered any revelations, Fraulein," I observed.

"Moreover, I see you are posing for your own personal gratification.

You wish to convince yourself of your constancy by provoking an attack from me. When love has reached that stage, Miss Hildegard, then the patient is no longer absolutely incurable. Now, to convince you that I am right, will you have the kindness to look me straight in the eyes and tell me that there is no shadow of doubt in your heart as to Mr.

Dannevig's truthfulness; that, in other words, you believe that on one occasion he a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of indignant virtue toward me, and in holy horror rebuked my profligacy. Dare you meet my eye, and tell me that?"

"Yes," she exclaimed, boldly stepping out into the moonlight, and meeting my eye with a steady gaze; but slowly and gradually the tears _would_ gather, her underlip _would_ quiver, and with a sudden movement she turned around, and burst out weeping.

"Oh, no! I cannot! I cannot!" she sobbed, sinking down upon the green sod.

I stood long gazing mournfully at her, while the sobs shook her frame; there was a child-like, hearty _abandon_ in her grief, which eased my mind, for it told me that her infatuation was not so hopeless, nor her hurt so great as I had feared.

The next evening when dinner was at an end, Mr. Pfeifer proposed a walk in the park. Hildegard pleaded a headache, and wished to be excused.

"Nonsense, child," said Pfeifer, with his usual good-humored peremptoriness. "If you have a headache, so much the more ought you to go. Put on your things now, and don't keep us waiting any longer than you can help."

Hildegard submitted with demure listlessness, and soon re-appeared in her walking costume.

The daylight had faded, and the evening was in its softest, most ethereal mood. The moon was drifting lazily among the light summer clouds, gazing down upon the many-voiced tumult of the crowded city, with that calm philosophic abstraction which always characterizes the moon, as if she, up there in her airy heights, were so infinitely exalted above all the distracting problems and doubts that hara.s.s our poor human existence. We entered a concert garden, which was filled with gayly dressed pleasure seekers; somewhere under the green roof of the trees an orchestra was discoursing strains of German music to a Teutonic audience.

"_Donnerwetter_!" said Pfeifer, enthusiastically; "that is the symphony in _E flat_; pretty well rendered too. Only hear that"--and he began to whistle the air softly, with lively gesticulations "Come, let us go nearer and listen."

"No, let us stay here, uncle," remonstrated Hildegard. "I don't think it is quite nice to go so near. They are drinking beer there, and there are so many horrible people."

"Nonsense, child! Where did you get all those silly whims from? Where it is respectable for your uncle to go, I am sure it won't hurt you to follow."

We made our way through the throng, and stationed ourselves under a tree, from which we had a full survey of the merry company, seated at small tables, with huge foam-crowned mugs of beer before them.

Suddenly a voice, somewhat louder than the rest, disentangled itself from the vague, inarticulate buzz, which filled the air about us.

Swift as a flash my eyes darted in the direction from which the voice came. There, within a few dozen steps from us, sat Dannevig between two gaudily attired women; another man was seated at the opposite side of the table, and between them stood a couple of bottles and several half-filled gla.s.ses. The sight was by no means new to me, and still, in that moment, it filled me with unspeakable disgust. The knight of Dannebrog was as charmingly free-and-easy as if he were nestled securely in the privacy of his own fireside; his fine plumes were deplorably ruffled, his hat thrust back, and his hair hanging in tangled locks down over his forehead; his eyes were heavy, and a smile of maudlin happiness played about his mouth.

"Now, don't make yourself precious, my dear," he was saying, laying his arm affectionately around the waist of the woman on his right. "I like German kisses. I speak from experience. Angels have no business to be--"

"_Himmel_, what is the matter with the child," cried Pfeifer, in a voice of alarm. "Why, my dear, you tremble all over. I ought not to have made you go out with that headache. Wait here while I run for some water."

Before I could offer my services, he was gone, leaving me alone with Hildegard.

"Let us go," she whispered, with a long, shuddering sigh, turning a white face, full of fright, disgust, and pitiful appeal toward me.

"Shall we not wait for your uncle?" I asked.

"Oh, I cannot. Let us go," she repeated, seizing my arm, and clinging convulsively to me.

We walked slowly away, and were soon overtaken by Mr. Pfeifer.

"How do you feel now, child?" he inquired anxiously.

"Oh, I feel--I feel--unclean," she whispered and shuddered again.

VIII.

Two years pa.s.sed, during which I completely lost sight of Dannevig. I learned that he had been dismissed from the service of the Immigration Company; that he played second violin for a few months at one of the lowest city theatres, and finally made a bold stroke for fame by obtaining the Democratic nomination for County Clerk. I was faithless enough, however, to call attention to the fact that he had never been naturalized, whereupon, a new caucus was called, and another candidate was put into the field.

The Pfeifers I continued to see frequently, and, at last, at Hildegard's own suggestion, told her the story I had so long withheld from her. She showed very little emotion, but sat pale and still with her hands folded in her lap, gazing gravely at me. When I had finished, she arose, walked the length of the room, then returned, and stopped in front of me.

"Human life seems at times a very flimsy affair, doesn't it?" she said, appealing to me again with her direct gaze.

"Yes, if one takes a cynical view of it," I answered.

She stood for a while pondering.

"Did I ever know that man?" she asked, looking up abruptly.

"You know best."

"Then it must have been very, very long ago."

A slight shiver ran through her frame. She shook my hand silently, and left the room.

One evening in the summer of 1870, just as the news from the Franco-Prussian war was arousing the enthusiasm of our Teutonic fellow-citizens, I was sauntering leisurely homeward, pondering with much satisfaction on the course history was taking. About half a mile from the Clark street bridge I found my progress checked by a crowd of men who had gathered on the sidewalk outside of a German saloon, and were evidently discussing some exciting topic. My journalistic instincts prompted me to stop and listen to the discussion.

"Poor fellow, I guess he is done for," some one was saying. "But they were both drunk; you couldn't expect anything else."

"Is any one hurt?" I asked, addressing my next neighbor in the crowd.

"Yes. It was a poor fool of a Dane. He got into a row with somebody about the war. Said he would undertake to whip ten Deutschers single-handed; that he had done so many a time in the Schleswig-Holstein war. Then there was some fighting, and he was shot."

I spoke a few words to the policeman at the door, and was admitted. The saloon was empty but in the billiard-room at its rear I saw a doctor in his shirt-sleeves, bending over a man who lay outstretched on a billiard-table. A bartender was standing by with a basin of water and a b.l.o.o.d.y towel.