L'Arrabiata and Other Tales Part 24

He looked up in her face, without rising from his knees. The great strong man lay helpless and crushed by the tempest of feeling that had swept over him. He had taken one of her hands, and pressed it to his lips. She went on.

"This thing I am going to do would be of no use whatever, if Walter ever came to know I did it. He is not a child now; he has the pride and the sensitiveness of a man. Were he to know that he owed this inheritance to me, he never would accept it: my most solemn protestations would be in vain. I might swear to him that all my happiness is placed in his; that the only interest I have on earth, is to provide for his future welfare; it would be no use, he would reject it all. Therefore it behoves us to take the proper measures to deceive him; and the safest way to deceive him in this, would be to undeceive him in another matter: he must know his father, and his father must be thanked for the change in his fortunes."

The Meister sprang to his feet, and paced to and fro in violent agitation.

"Never!" he cried at last; "It is impossible, Helen, I can't do it."

"What can't you do?" and she looked very grave. He stood still before her with an imploring look.

"Don't ask me to do that," he said; "It costs me nothing to take that dear boy to my heart, and call him son, if you think it is in your power to absolve me from the promise I made your sister. But that I should appear as his benefactor, I who have done him and his poor mother such grievous wrong--" She interrupted him--

"That wrong has been expiated, brother; and what there may remain, will be expiated now by the penance I prescribe. I too have some wrong to expiate, though not of my own doing. Had my poor sister, in the delirium of her revenge, not destroyed the inheritance you had a right to expect, things would have happened differently. Promise me, therefore, to do as I ask you, and give me your hand upon it. Believe me, it will be the saving of us all." She rose; "I hear steps in the pa.s.sage," she said; "if it be Walter, I hope you will not let this night pa.s.s, without having spoken to him. Only do not tell him that it was I who proposed his going; he has a real father now. I abdicate my authority, and lay down my duties in your hands. I know he will not have to suffer for the change." So saying, she left the room, without waiting for his answer.

In the pa.s.sage she met, not Walter, but the lawyer; who had brought the deed of gift.

"I have already talked it over with my brother-in-law," she said in a kindly tone, to the silent man before her. "He has consented to do as I wish, and now I leave the rest to you and him, with entire confidence in you both; would you be so kind as to go in and tell him what you think about it?"

And bowing slightly to him, she pa.s.sed on, to go into the garden.

There, in the morning, she had left the bushes and the fruit-trees with their buds all shut, and now they were clothed in tenderest green.

She looked at them with tranquil pleasure; and while she walked down the narrow gravel path, she thought to herself how soon she would have to leave them, never to see them more. But there was not a shade of regret in her meditations, and her heart, that had pa.s.sed through so many storms, had come to a sudden calm.

Half an hour later, she heard Dr. Hansen's step on the pavement of the little court, which he crossed, and she saw that he was coming through the garden gate. She made an effort to conceal a gust of emotion that suddenly came over her, and she looked searchingly in his serious face.

"What news do you bring me? I hope we have not forgotten anything that may prove a hindrance to so simple a desire as mine is?--"

"Nothing," he answered gravely. "It is settled in the most formal manner, and all I have to do in this house in the capacity of lawyer, may be considered as definitively concluded. Will you forgive me, if I say that the lawyer has not succeeded in silencing the man?--who _will_ speak, even though he has so much reason to fear that he will not find a hearing."

He paused, as if in expectation of some sign to interpret in his favor, or against him.

She said nothing, and his courage rose.

"Yon know how I feel;" he continued, "and after our recent conversation on Sunday evening, I certainly should not have presumed to molest you with another word that sounded hopeful. Only the day after, I ascertained from your brother-in-law, what I had already surmised with pain, that your reason for rejecting every suitor who presented himself, was because you felt no security that he sought you, not for your fortune, but for yourself.

"It was small consolation for me to know that it was not, in the first instance, any special aversion to myself, that had cut me off from all my hopes of happiness. What could I ever do to convince you of the bitter injustice of your distrust?--If my undeclared devotion has not proved it to you in all those years, what farther a.s.surance of mine could ever convince you of it? But to-day you were so good as to take me into your confidence, and to allow me to look deeper into your heart, than would have been necessary for a simple affair of business.

In my office I could not thank you; and here--will you take me for a madman, if I have not given up all hope, and venture to ask whether circ.u.mstances may not have arisen to induce you to change your mind? In me, you will never find a change."

She kept her eyes cast down. "Do not ask me now," she said, with quivering lips. "I have need of all my resolution to do what has to be done, and it has been sorely tried."

"Not now?" he whispered, "another time then?"

"My dear kind friend," she said, now looking him full in the face; "if you really be a friend to me, wait until that young moon that is just rising, has run its course, before you come here again. There is a strange chaos in my mind. You would hardly understand it, if I were to try to explain, and unravel all its mysteries. They will unravel themselves in time, and then you may come for an answer to your question. A clear straight-forward answer. This is all I can give you for to-day."

"It is more than I dared to hope; more than I deserve," he said, with deep emotion, and bent low to kiss the hand she had offered him as farewell, and so they parted.

Four weeks later, the same pale crescent that had lighted our yellow-haired young friend through the woods that evening, was shining in full refulgence upon a street of a great city, in the quarter chiefly inhabited by students and artists. Close to the open window of a small lodging on the third story, catching the last glimpse of fading light, a young man was seated before a great drawing board; with bold pencil drawing great broad sepia lines, to relieve with light and shade a correct and tasteful architectural ornament.

His landlady came in with a letter in her hand. "From home;" she said, laid it down upon the table, and left the room again. The colour-box and drawing board were thrown aside, and in an instant, with trembling haste, he had broken the seal.

The young artist seated himself upon the windowsill, and read as follows:

"My dear spoiled boy! That we have been almost three weeks parted, is a fact I should find incredible, did I not know my almanack too well for reasonable disbelief.

"There, the day of your departure has been branded with a thick black stroke, and the days on which your letters came, distinguished with bright red ones. It is a fact, for nineteen long days we have been deprived of our six-foot son, and for how much longer, is past all present reckoning.

"I began several letters which I never finished. I knew that your father wrote, so that as for news, you were not starved. Anything more your little mother might have wished to say, though she certainly is no sentimental writer, would only have tended to make you homesick; and home is a thing with which, at present, you are to have nothing more to do.

"I had the satisfaction of hearing by your last letter, that you find your new mode of life already becoming congenial to you; that your work absorbs you, and your comrades suit you. Here steps in maternal jealousy at once, and in terror of losing you altogether, I write this letter as reminder; also because I have a thing or two to tell you which may not be indifferent to you.

"In the first place, you must know, that yesterday was the day appointed for the magic ceremonies with which the Burgermeister thought fit to inaugurate his villa. The Heavens were pleased to smile on his designs, and favored him with the loveliest day this year has brought.

In the grounds and garden, every flower that grows and blows, was in fall bloom and fragrance. Our worthy host--you know him in his gala mood--was courtesy itself. Wife and daughter attired from head to foot, in correctest taste and newest fashion; and we poor provincials rigged out in our best, each one according to his abilities.

"What will you say to your little mother, when you hear that she turned out in fall ball dress!--worse--what will you say when you hear that she actually danced?--Not merely a sober polonaise with our host, who led us by torchlight all over the house, down to the lowest cellar, and into the park and grounds--but actually valses and ecossaises; even a heel-splitting mazurka, which your rival of old, the young referendarius, led off with the daughter of the house.

"Alas! poor boy, it is not to be concealed from you, that the venerable guardian of your youth took strange advantage of your absence, to wax wild and wanton in her old age.

"Not only did I join the giddy throng myself; whirling round our well-known gallery of sh.e.l.ls, perfectly undaunted by any flaming volcano whatsoever, but I succeeded in turning a far stronger and more respectable head to my own mischievous purposes, and I fear we are a superannuated couple who have fed the gossips with our follies, for some time.

"My dear child, it is my own confession, or you might refuse to believe the papers when you read it in them. Your mamma has finally made up her mind to give you a stepfather, and her decision was solemnly celebrated last night in a select circle of authorities and townspeople. Your mother's health and her bridegroom's, was drunk with all the honors, as the clock struck twelve.

"At first I thought that all the world must be astonished, and would regard it as no less improbable than improper, that a mother should think of weddings, when she has a great grown-up son so far away. But, judging by their words at least, it did not astonish them at all, and they seemed to think it quite correct; and so after all, I daresay, there is no one to find fault with us, save precisely this grown-up son. Here I would make the appropriate observation that a dutiful child never presumes to judge its parents, but rather looks respectfully on all their actions, as emanations of a maturer judgment.

"In the fond hope that my dear Walter is just such a dutiful child, I send him his stepfather's love meanwhile, and I trust that he will not fail to bring us his in return, when some fine day he comes back to us as a distinguished architect; when, instead of the poky old house we are to take possession of in autumn, he will have to build us a sunny airy villa outside the gates; though I should not care for volcanoes or sh.e.l.l-galleries.

"And now I must say good-bye to you for to-day. He (major) is just come to fetch me for a walk; and as he is to be my master, of course I must obey. Only about your father; he has grown quite young again, and his leg is quite alert--to be sure the days are warm, and I don't really think, that without that trip to Italy--It is no use trying. My master will not leave me time to finish--I begin to fear that I have sold myself to cruel bondage. Thank Heaven! I have a great strong son to threaten with, who, I trust, will never forget, or cease to care for his

"little mother."

"P. S. It would be dishonesty in me to suppress poor Lottchen's love: she asked after you the very first thing, with a charming little air of melancholy; which, however, did not prevent her dancing every dance, and eating a vielliebchen at supper with the Burgermeister's son. Alas!

they are all alike!--Youth is given to folly; and even age----!"

Here came a long dash of the pen, which Walter sat looking at, without moving for half an hour. Only when his landlady came in to ask him whether he would have his lamp, he stared at her, shook his head, and carefully putting away the letter in his pocket, he went downstairs, and away towards a distant quarter of the town, to a modest little wine-house, where he was wont to meet his comrades once a week, to enjoy a sociable evening.

When he came home about twelve o'clock, his landlady heard him singing a s.n.a.t.c.h of a student song as he walked up stairs--a very unusual circ.u.mstance.

"What can have made him so jolly to-night, I wonder?" she said to herself as she pulled the bed clothes over her ears; "he must have had very good news from home.--This is the first letter he ever got, that made him go to bed singing!"

THE END.