Only a Girl Part 11

"How does it look there?"

"Oh, beautiful, most beautiful! It s.h.i.+nes and gleams so silvery, and it is so calm and quiet, and there are mountains and valleys there just like ours, only they are not coloured, they are just pure light!"

"Did you see the man in the moon?"

"No, I didn't see him; Uncle Leuthold said there are no people in the moon; but I don't believe him. They are only so far off that we can't see them. And they must be much happier and better than we are here; I'm sure they never beat children; and who knows whether perhaps the dear G.o.d himself does not live there? If I could fly, I would fly up there!" And she gazed upward with beaming eyes, and a long sigh escaped from her little breast.

"No, dear Ernestine, you must not fly away; no one can tell that the moon is as lovely near to, as it is so far off. And it is very nice here, too, for when you grow up you can be either a mamma or an aunt, and then no one can do anything to you. No one ever strikes my aunt or my mamma--no one!"

But Ernestine was no longer conscious of the child's prattle; her eyes closed, her beloved book dropped from her hands; Ole Luckoie, the gentle Northern G.o.d of slumber, had arisen from its pages. He had poured balm into her painful wound, and extended his canopy, with its thousands of gay pictures, over her soul.

Angelika looked at her for awhile, and then asked, "Are you asleep again?" and, upon receiving no answer, she was quite content, and got softly down from the high stool, and seated herself again upon her chair with the grave air of a sentinel. At last Heim, with Herr Neuenstein, came home from the funeral, and the two gentlemen entered the apartment together.

"She has been talking with me," Angelika announced.

"What! has she come to herself?" asked the Geheimrath in pleased surprise.

"Oh, yes,--we talked about a great many things--and then she went to sleep again."

The Geheimrath rubbed his hands.--"That's good! Did she seem to be perfectly sensible?"

"Oh, yes; she was perfectly sensible," Angelika a.s.sured him.

"What a pity that I was not here! Now I hope we shall bring her through," said the Geheimrath to Herr Neuenstein; but the latter stood looking at the corpse-like figure of the sleeping child, and shook his head.

"I see," continued the physician, "that it seems impossible to you, and yet I believe she will recover. Who that sees such a faded blossom lying there would suspect the wonderful recuperative energy hidden within it? And I tell you this child possesses an immense amount of vitality, or she would have succ.u.mbed to such brutal treatment as she has received. She will recover; believe me, she will recover."

"I should rejoice indeed to think that your exertions will not prove in vain. And you really wish to take her with you?"

"Yes, if her hypocritical uncle will let her go, I will deliver her from his claws, and educate her as is best for her health and becoming to her position as an heiress."

"You are a genuine philanthropist, Geheimrath."

"Yes, I am a philanthropist; but there is small merit in that. Some people love puppies and kittens, others cultivate flowers with enthusiasm,--I love to educate and train human beings. Whenever a pair of melancholy eyes stare out at me from a child's face, I want to stick the child in my herbarium like a rare flower. Yes, if it only cost as little to cultivate children as plants, I should have had a human hot-house long ago. But the taste is so confoundedly expensive."

"Yes, we all know that you spend your whole income in such good works.

You might have been a millionaire long ago, if it had not been for your lavish generosity."

"What would you have? One man wastes his money upon one whim, and another on another. This happens to be my whim, and I spend just as much upon it as I can conscientiously in the interest of my adopted son, who stands nearest my heart. But now do me the kindness to leave the room, for our talk is disturbing the child's sleep. I will stay here for an hour and watch her."

"Come, Angelika," said Neuenstein: "Uncle Heim is very cross to-day,--let us go home." He took the child's hand, and nodded affectionately to Heim. "Shall I send the carriage for you?"

"No, I thank you; I must return to the capital; the king has commanded my attendance this afternoon. But I shall be here again to-morrow."

"Adieu, dear uncle," said little Angelika, standing on tiptoe, and holding up her rosy lips to be kissed. "You won't be cross to me, will you?" she asked, nestling her fair curls among his gray locks as he bent down to her; "I have been so good!" And then she went softly out with Herr Neuenstein.

When Heim was alone, he sat down by the bedside, and silently contemplated the sleeping child. "I'll wager," he thought, "that she will be very beautiful one of these days. Her face is older than her years, and that is always ugly in a child, but when her age accords with the earnestness of that brow, and her features lose their sharpness under more kindly treatment, it will be a magnificent head.

To think of having such a child and beating it half to death! Such a child!"

Something like a tear glistened in the old man's eyes, and he softly took a pinch of snuff to compose himself, for these thoughts filled him with the pain of an old wound, and well-nigh overcame him. But the pinch was of no avail. He gazed upon the treasure before him, which had fallen to one utterly unworthy such a gift, who had neglected and despised it, and he thought what joy its possession would have given him. And he remembered that such joy might have been his, had his heart not clung unalterably to one who was not destined for him. Now it was too late; and the past, in which he might have sown the harvest of love that he longed to reap, was irrevocable. The pa.s.sion that had so long filled his heart was conquered and dead; but the longing for affection, that is stronger than pa.s.sion, still lived on in the old man's breast.

"When a man's wife dies and leaves him," he thought, "she lives again in her children; but he who has neither wife nor child is doubly poor."

He had watched over many human lives, but not one could he call his own; he had preserved the lives of many, he had given life to none. He had seen the bitterest woes soothed by affection, and he should die without leaving one child behind to mourn his loss. And, lost in such thoughts, it seemed to him that he was actually lying upon his death-bed, and that he felt a soft arm stealing around his neck, and heard a sweet, caressing voice sob out, "Father."

It was Ole Luckoie who had granted him this bitter-sweet dream by Ernestine's bedside; it vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and left nothing behind but a tear on the old man's furrowed cheek.

Then the latch of the door began to tremble, as though a carriage were driving by, and the heavy footsteps that caused the noise approached the apartment. Before the Geheimrath could prevent it, the door was flung open, and Bertha's colossal figure appeared upon the threshold.

She was dressed in a new s.h.i.+ning black silk, and the stiff cambric lining rustled so loudly as she approached the bed that the child started up frightened, and the Geheimrath could not suppress an exclamation.

"Good-morning, Herr Geheimrath; good-morning, Tina," she said with a nod. "So, Tina, you're alive still, I see. There was no need of such a great fuss about you, after all."

Ernestine, at this rude greeting, flung herself to the farther side of the bed, and cried, "Oh, send my aunt away!--I do not want to see her.

I will not!"

The Geheimrath politely offered his arm to the intruder and conducted her from the room without a word. Bertha, amazed, asked, "Why, what have I done? Can't I see my niece?"

"If you yourself do not understand, madam, that this frail life needs to be treated with the greatest possible tenderness, I, a physician, must tell you that it will be your fault if my care of the child should prove of no avail and she should die in spite of it. I must therefore entreat you either to discontinue your visits to the child, or to address her more gently."

"Why, goodness gracious!" cried Bertha, "I was only in jest. Mercy on me! you may wrap her up in cotton-wool, for all I care."

The Geheimrath gave an involuntary sigh. "Poor child," he thought, "to be in danger of falling into such hands!"

Suddenly the hall-door was opened, and a face appeared, so ashy pale, so livid, that Bertha started in terror. It was Leuthold; but he was hardly to be recognized. When he perceived the Geheimrath, he saluted him with his usual courtesy, then, extending his hand to Bertha, said in a low voice, "My dear Bertha, be kind enough to come up-stairs with me."

She followed him in the greatest trepidation, for she had never before beheld him thus; and on the joyful day of Hartwich's funeral, too! What could have happened? He took her hand and conducted her up the staircase, his fingers were as cold and clammy as those of a corpse.

She almost shuddered as they walked along together in such solemn silence.

They reached the door of their own apartment. Leuthold entered, dragged his wife in after him, closed the door, and, before she was aware of what he was doing, she felt the icy hand around her throat like an iron band.

"Shall I strangle you?" he gasped, with eyes like a serpent's when it is wound around its victim.

"Merciful Heaven!" shrieked Bertha, falling upon her knees to extricate herself. The cold hand grasped her throat still more tightly.

"Utter one sound that the servants can hear, and I will throttle you!"

hissed Leuthold. "Be quiet! or----" Bertha ceased struggling, and almost lost her consciousness. He then released her and pushed her down upon the sofa, where she sat utterly astounded.

He put his hand to his head, and then whispered, almost inaudibly, as though speaking with the greatest difficulty, "On the day of Ernestine's fall, when Heim came to the house, do you remember that I strictly enjoined it upon you to observe narrowly whatever occurred in the house?"

"Yes," stammered the frightened woman.

"Did you do it?"

No answer.

"You did not do it."

"I was so afraid of Hartwich that I went up-stairs again," Bertha confessed with hesitation.

"And so,--" Leuthold's chest heaved, his breath came heavily, and he clenched his hands convulsively, "and so it is your fault that Hartwich has disinherited us and left all his property to Ernestine." His face grew still paler, his slender figure tottered, he grasped at a chair for support, and fell fainting upon the ground.