Only a Girl Part 29

"Two for you, Herr Professor, and one for Fraulein von Hartwich from the schoolmaster."

"What did he want?"

"He asked for some linen-cambric rags for his weak eyes. She took him some."

"She herself? Why?"

"She was tired because she could not study, and she wanted to see Herr Leonhardt's eyes. She thought she might learn something from them."

"Very well,--that will do. Good-night, Frau Willmers."

"Good-night, Herr Professor," said the cunning housekeeper, hastening to tell Ernestine how slyly she had managed matters and contrived to pay due honour to truth by mixing up some of it with her falsehoods.

Ernestine sat in an easy-chair, her eyes fixed upon the flame of the lamp. A book lay open in her lap,--"Andersen's Fairy Tales."

She could not smile at what Frau Willmers told her. There was something in it that filled her with uneasiness. For the first time since she had lived with her uncle, she felt that she was a prisoner, watched and guarded as such. She was obliged to conceal, as if it were a crime, the fact that she had become acquainted with a true, n.o.ble human being. She had to account on the plea of interest in science for visiting a poor suffering man. The lie disgraced her, and the necessity that had prompted it was a galling chain! All this she felt to-day for the first time. One day had aroused within her the longing for independence!--the greatest misfortune that could have befallen her unsuspecting uncle, but not the only one that this day was to bring him.

When he went to his room, he found there the letters of which Frau Willmers had told him. The first that he took up he opened instantly.

It was from his daughter Gretchen, and ran thus:

"My dearest Father:

"In a week I shall be fifteen years old, and next month my course here will be finished, and I shall be fitted to take my place in the school as a teacher. Once more I turn to you and entreat you, dear father, let me come home to you! I will not be any burden to you. My teachers will tell you that I know enough to enable a young girl to earn her own living. I thank and bless you a thousand times, dearest father, for having me educated to be a useful member of society. I will be my cousin's maid, and work for her for my support, if I may only be near you! Oh, I pray you yield to my entreaties! You have always answered my request by telling me that her bad example--her irreligion and hardness of heart--would have a ruinous effect upon me. But indeed, dear father, this could not be. Thanks to my good, kind teachers, I am so firm in my faith, I have been so well trained, that this one bad example could not have any effect upon me, especially when I should daily see how my poor father suffers in discharging his guardianship of so stubborn a creature. Why did my dead uncle Hartwich bequeath to you such a thankless office? Indeed, dearest father, it would be easier if you would let me help you. I would leave nothing untried to soften her heart and turn it to good, and, however angry she might be with me, I would disarm her by patience and submission; and, even although I could have no effect upon her, I could be something to you, dear father. Oh, how heavenly it would be to sit alone together in your room after the day's work was finished! I could sit at your feet and show you my sketches and drawings, drinking draughts from the rich treasures of your mind and cheering you with my ever-ready nonsense. And sometimes I could lean my head upon your heart, that no one understands as well as the child to whom you have shown all its depths of tenderness, and sleep as peacefully as in those dear childish days when you cradled me in your arms with all a mother's care! Oh, father, you are everything in the world to me! My mother, who forsook me when I was so young--who left you for another so immeasurably your inferior, I do not know--I can form no image of her, unlovely as she must be, in my mind. You are mother, father, everything, to me! My cradle stood by your bedside; your eyes smiled upon me when I awoke. You never spoke a harsh word to me, you never looked unkindly at me. You treated the wayward child, who must so often have vexed you, with unvarying gentleness and patience; and at last you sent me from you, that I might be thoroughly trained and educated, since it is our fate to earn our daily bread. You sent me from you, but I saw plainly, when we parted, that this was the greatest sacrifice of all,--that I carried away your whole heart with me. You did it for me,--out of affection for me. You have given me up now for almost seven years, and I have worked and studied as hard as I could, so that I might soon be with you again; and now, when I have learned enough to be able to repay you a very little for all that you have done and suffered for me, you refuse to let me fly to your dear arms, for fear of the miserable influence of your ward. Father, you will--you must--hear and heed me. The tears that blotted your last letter to me fell hot into my very soul. They were tears of longing--do not deny it--for your child, and I will never rest until you give heed to your own heart! Ah, father dear, you will be pleased when you see me! I am taller and stronger than our governess! Every one says I am very tall for my age--I might be taken for eighteen years old! When we go to walk together, you will have to give me your arm! Ah, what a delight that will be! I shall be too proud to touch the ground! and, depend upon it, I shall be able to do something with Ernestine! She never used to be cross to me as a child; I cannot think how she can have altered so. How could she become so changed with such a guardian? In spirit I kiss his dear, kind hands! Happy girl!--to have my father for a teacher! Shall I not grudge her a happiness of which she has proved herself so unworthy?

Yes; I do grudge it her! I do not envy her for her talents or her wealth, but I do envy her for my father!--I must envy her for that! You give her your time--your care; you devote yourself to her, and let your own child grow up far away from you, among strangers,--your own child,--who would give all that she possesses for one look from her father's eyes!"

Leuthold could read no further. He writhed like a worm on the ground beneath the weight of reproach with which this artless creature thus heaped him. The thunderbolt of a G.o.d could have inflicted no such punishment upon him as the pure, sweet, angelic love of his child.

He sunk upon his knees, and kissed the letter again and again. "My child! my child!" he cried aloud, racked almost to madness by intense feverish longing. At this moment of weakness he was overwhelmed with remorse. He had banished from his side his dearest possession,--his Gretchen. And why? Because he loved her too dearly to expose her to contact with the ideas that he sought to impress upon the mind of his ward,--because he would not allow his child to breathe the poisoned atmosphere of falsehood in which he chose that Ernestine should dwell.

And why had he thus chosen? Because, he loved Gretchen too much to have her always poor and dependent, because he determined to win back the inheritance that he had once thought his own, but which had been so unexpectedly lost to him, and because there was only one way, in his mind, in which this could be done,--by making the possessor of this inheritance so utterly unfit for the world that nothing might wrest her person or her property from his grasp.

But, when he received such a letter as the above, overflowing with the devoted love, the pain at separation, of his exiled child, something stirred in his breast that would not be quieted, demanding whether he might not have expressed his paternal love in another way, whether it were not a desecration of this angel to attempt to make her future happy by a crime? Whether the joy of educating such a child himself would not have outweighed the wealth of the world? And then he began to reckon and compare,--and the account was never balanced,--for the years of separation from his daughter there was no equivalent. These were rare hours when, like a criminal before his judge, he was arraigned in spirit before the pure eyes of his child; but they cost him months of life.

His hair had grown grey,--his powers of mind were enfeebled by all these years of self-control and hypocrisy,--of crime and dread of discovery. He had nothing to hope for for himself--but for Gretchen?

And what if he had failed in his reckoning? What if a mischievous chance should again deprive him at the last moment of the fruit of all this sacrifice? The path of sin had separated him from his daughter hitherto. Was it possible that it could ever lead him to her?

His high, narrow forehead was covered with a cold dew as he pa.s.sed his hand over it. He was indeed to be pitied,--a man who had not the courage to be wholly good nor wholly bad!

The night breeze blew fresh through the open window, and the miserable man was thoroughly chilled. He arose, wrapped himself in his shawl, closed the window, and went to the table where lay the other letter. It was directed in the handwriting of the overseer of the Unkenheim Factory. Leuthold put it down--he had not the courage to read it "What can he have to tell me?" he moaned, utterly dispirited.

At last he roused himself. "What must be, must!"

He unfolded the coa.r.s.e paper and read--while his face grew ashy pale.

"Umkenheim, July 30, 18--.

"Honoured Sir:

"You should have believed me when I told you that there was nothing to be done with bringing the water from that miserable spring. Twenty years ago you placed me at the head of this factory, and I think I have shown that I understand my business. It is a ruinous thing to conduct such a huge undertaking from a distance. I told you so when you got back the factory again, but you never believe what I say. If the business had been allowed to proceed as usual, we should have made a sure, although small, profit from it. But you were in such a devil of a hurry to make the capital yield a hundred per cent., because you were always afraid lest your ward should smell a rat and require her own again,--or lest she should marry, and you would have to render an account to some suspicious husband, who would be less forbearing even than Fraulein Ernestine. Therefore these giant speculations were set on foot, and everything was to be accomplished in the twinkling of an eye.

I told you we had not sufficient sewerage for such an enormous enlargement. Then you never rested until that expensive drain was dug, and we very soon found that it had too little incline and the refuse all stuck fast in it. Then you thought we could carry it off by a stream of water turned into the drain. More money was spent, and again spent in vain. The dry summer had exhausted the spring,--it was always small, and now it has entirely disappeared. The large supply of raw material, not yet paid for, cannot be worked up, for the villagers are beginning to talk again of 'poisoning the springs,' and the drain has begun to leak. If the necessary amount of water cannot be procured, I shall be prosecuted, and then nothing will shield either you or me from discovery. The people already think it strange that the Italian gentleman, who pretended to buy the factory by your advice, has disappeared. It is whispered about that he is not the real owner, and Heaven only knows what it all means. We have, therefore, more need of caution than ever!

"There is nothing for it but to face the worst and continue the aqueduct to the forest,--then we shall be safe. Digging ditches and hunting for springs is of no use,--more money is frittered away so than in large undertakings. I do not know what cash you have on hand; if you have not enough to lengthen the aqueduct, in a few weeks you will be bankrupt. It will not be my fault!

"I have no more money for the workmen's wages,--and it would be well, now that work must be suspended for a time, to pay them up. It might keep them in good humour. I know that you will vent all your anger upon me again, but I tell you I will put up with nothing more. I was an honest man until you tempted me and made me your accomplice. Still, I have not played the rogue to you, my princ.i.p.al, although I have, more's the pity, made myself amenable to the law. You have gone on just like Herr Neuenstein, who became bankrupt too, because he would not listen to me; but he was an honourable man, and paid up every penny that he owed, so that he was not afraid to look any one in the face. If you fail, you drag down your ward, whose money you have been using, with you,--and me too,--poor devil that I am! There is truth in the proverb 'Ill-gotten gains never prosper.' G.o.d help me!

"Yours, etc.,

"Clemens Prucker,

"_Overseer_."

It was too much. "My child! my child! I have sinned, forged, embezzled, for your sake, in vain! Can you be sufficiently proud of such a father?" he moaned,--his head fell back in his chair, and he lost consciousness.

The day had dawned when he opened his eyes; the atmosphere was full of the disagreeable odour of the dying candles, his limbs were stiff and numb from his uneasy posture, and he was shivering with cold. When he tried to walk, his hands and feet were asleep, and he staggered like a drunken man. At last his eyes lighted upon the letters. He picked them up and went to his writing-table. There he put them away in a secret drawer, then drew forth a safe and investigated its contents. It contained certificates of stock and some rolls of ready money.

The sun shone brightly into the room, and still the pale man sat there counting and calculating. At last he put all the contents of the safe into a leather travelling-bag. Then he rang the bell and ordered the servant, who appeared, to have the carriage brought round and to pack up for him sufficient clothes to last during a journey of several days.

When he heard that his niece had arisen, he went to her. "Good-morning, Ernestine," said he. "How are you to-day?"

"I should put that question to you, uncle," she replied. "You look as if you had just arisen from the grave!"

"Oh, there is nothing the matter with me. I did not sleep much. The overseer at Unkenheim writes to me on the part of my Italian friend, begging me to come as soon as possible to the factory, where everything is going wrong. I think it my duty to do what I can in the matter, as I know all about the business, and unfortunately advised my friend to make the purchase."

"Are you going, then?" asked Ernestine, with a feeling of secret delight that she could not explain to herself.

"Yes, I must leave you for a few days, hard as it is for me. But promise me before I go that you will have that treatise that you are at work upon completed by my return. Let nothing prevent you from finishing it. If you feel unwell,--you know that is of no real consequence,--you can readily overcome all your ailments by resolutely willing to do so. Take quinine, if you must. Now may I rely upon finding the essay complete when I see you again?"

"Yes, uncle, I promise; and if I do not keep my word, it will be for the first time in my life."

"Farewell, then, my child,--I must hurry to catch the train. Let nothing interrupt you,--do you hear?--nothing!"

He hurried out, and sought the housekeeper. "Frau Willmers," he said, "I rely on you to prevent Fraulein von Hartwich from receiving any visitors, be they who they may. If I find, upon my return, that you have permitted the least infringement of my orders, you may consider yourself dismissed. I cannot tell you when I shall return. Conduct yourself so that you need not fear my arrival, for it may take place at any moment."

"Rely upon me entirely, Herr Professor," replied Frau Willmers; and Leuthold got hastily into his vehicle.

"Now, that sly master of mine thinks all is secure, and that he has the heart of a girl of two-and-twenty under lock and key. How stupid these clever folks often are!" After this fashion Frau Willmers soliloquized, as her master drove off.

CHAPTER V.

FRUITLESS PRETENSIONS.

"Your new dress-coat has come from the tailor's," was Frau Herbert's greeting to her husband, upon his entrance.