Only a Girl Part 9

"You fool! I want it for myself. Take your ap.r.o.n; put that up to your eyes--so!" With these words he opened the door and entered slowly, pus.h.i.+ng Bertha before him. Hartwich lay extended upon the bed, his face so changed that Bertha was glad to be able to hide her eyes in her ap.r.o.n. Leuthold stood beside her, a picture of dignified manly grief; his bearing impressed the bystanders; the surgeon, the men- and maid-servants, who were all present, were convinced that Herr Gleissert had really loved his step-brother, and that it was rank injustice to accuse him of heartlessness. After a few moments, he laid his hand gently upon his wife's shoulder, but its stern pressure reminded her that she was to fall upon her knees. She sank down as carefully as she could, and with her broad back and bending head was a beautiful and moving image of woe. After awhile he bent over her and said gently, "Come, my child, do not be so agitated; our tears cannot bring him back to life--come!" Then he raised her, leaned her head upon his breast to conceal her face, and conducted her from the room. The others looked after them with amazement.

"I cannot understand it," said the surgeon. "Every one knows that the woman never could endure Herr von Hartwich, and yet now she seems almost dead with grief!"

"She isn't really sorry," growled a groom; "it's all sham!"

"Yes, yes," Rieka added, "she didn't shed a tear,--not a single tear, for all she rubbed her eyes so with her ap.r.o.n!"

"That's true,--she is right," murmured the group; "neither he nor she shed a single tear. Well, there's a pair of them. Do they suppose we are so stupid as not to see how glad they are that the master is dead?

'Tis a pity that the money will not fall into better hands."

Then they separated, and went indifferently about their work.

"That was not so bad," said Leuthold, when he had reached his own room with Bertha; "but still you certainly have no genius for the stage."

"You ought to be glad that I can never play a part before you," she said, shaking herself as if to shake off the disagreeable impression of what she had seen like dust from her clothes.

In the mean time the maid had brought the child in from the garden, and had laid the table.

"We will have some champagne to-day," said Leuthold, taking down the keys of the cellar. "We need something to support us under such exciting circ.u.mstances. Send Lena for some ice." And he left the room.

Frau Bertha sent the girl for ice, and said to herself with complacency, "That ice-house was the best thing I ever planned."

The little girl, who was too fat and chubby to move very steadily, had crept under the table, and now, catching hold of the corner of the table-cloth, tried to lift herself by it, thereby pulling down a couple of plates and knives upon the floor. Bertha caught up the screaming child, gave it two or three hard slaps, saying, "Now you know what you are crying for," and then carried it to and fro to quiet it, well knowing that her strict husband would not endure any noise. Gretchen ceased crying just as her father entered with the champagne. Lena brought the ice, and the bottles were arranged in it. When the husband and wife were seated at table, Bertha had the fragments of the broken plates cleared away. "Oh, heavens!" she muttered, "nothing but bad signs. If our fortune should be destroyed like that china!"

"You unmitigated fool!" scolded her husband; "if everything that we desire were only as secure as our legally devised inheritance, Gretchen's future husband would be now tumbling about in a royal nursery, and there would be a French cook in our kitchen."

"Oh, then," Bertha interrupted him with irritation, "you are not satisfied with my cooking,--you want a Frenchman."

"Only a Frenchman could supply your place," replied her husband, quite ready to practise himself in the delicate flattery which he intended to make use of in future towards ladies in aristocratic circles. He kissed her hand and said, "I would not have these rosy fingers any longer degraded by contact with the rude utensils of cookery. Let all that be left to the hard, rough hands of some skilful gastronome."

Frau Bertha stared at him in surprise.

"Why, can gastronomes cook?"

"Most certainly,--what else should they do?"

"I thought they looked at the stars through gla.s.ses!"

Leuthold clasped his hands in dismay, and cast a look towards heaven.

"Good heavens! when I think of your making such a speech among our future friends, I am so profoundly humiliated that I could almost determine to make over my property to some religious inst.i.tution--some monastery--and enroll myself among its members. Woman, woman, must I teach you the difference between gastronomy, the science of cookery, and astronomy, the science of the stars?"

"Gastronomy or astronomy!" said Bertha pettishly, as she ladled out the soup, "it is a great deal better for me to understand cooking than the long names you call it. Would you have liked, during all the ten years that you were too poor to keep a regular cook, to have a wife who could talk Latin with you, but whose dinners a dog could not have eaten?"

"No, no, indeed, my dear Bertha!" said her husband with a shudder; "but the two can be united if you try. I do not ask you either to study Greek and Latin, or to resign your masterly supervision of our kitchen department; but you have hitherto performed many little household offices, that could as well have been left to the servant, because you had no pleasanter way of occupying your time. This must be otherwise now; hitherto you have had the excuse of our straitened circ.u.mstances that have compelled you sometimes to discharge a servant's duties. Now there will be no such excuse; for you will have a suitable household in town, and time to cultivate your mind and render yourself a worthy member of the society to which I shall introduce you."

Bertha in her impatience let her spoon fall into the soup-plate, and then wreaked her irritation upon the soup, which she poured hastily back into the tureen.

"If you should do such a thing as that before strangers," said her husband angrily, "you would stamp yourself as a person of no refinement, and I should be disgraced."

Bertha brought her hand down upon the table so heavily that the gla.s.ses rang again. "This is really too much! Can I no longer eat as I please?

As long as you were poor, and I spent my little all in procuring delicacies for you, you found me all very well, and had plenty of fine words for me; but now, that you are rich and I have nothing left, I am not good enough for you, and you take quite another tone with me.

Heaven help me! There is no more pleasure in store for me. I really believe you would send me out of the house if I should not succeed in pleasing you. Oh, if I had only known!"

She was silent, because Lena appeared with the roast; but a couple of large tears dropped into the soup-plate which she handed to the servant.

"What exaggerated nonsense!" said Leuthold at last. "Be good enough to carve the meat,--I am hungry. You know I am a respectable man,--slow to adopt harsh measures if they can be avoided. I hope you will not force me to them by stubborn conduct. You will recognize and fulfil the duties which our wealth imposes upon us."

"Duties, duties? I thought that when I was rich I could begin really to enjoy life and do as I pleased; but instead of that I must wear a double face and worry about everything. It is just as if you gave me a new sofa in the place of the old one, but forbade me to lie down upon it for fear of injuring the cover. Of course I should long for the old one, upon which I could stretch myself in comfort whenever I chose."

Leuthold smiled. "You are not forbidden to lie down upon the new sofa.

I only ask you to take off your muddy boots when you do so. Do you understand?"

Bertha was so far consoled that she applied herself to devouring the food upon her plate in silence. Her husband regarded her with a strange mixture of humour and discontent.

"You must at least learn to hold your fork in your left hand," he said at last.

"Mercy!" exclaimed Bertha again. "What matter is it about such a trifle?"

"A great deal of matter, my dear. Such trifles show refinement, just as the mercury in the thermometer shows the degree of heat and cold. If you lay your knife aside and clutch your fork in your right hand like a pitchfork, every one of any culture will say, 'That woman is a person of no refinement. She has not been used to good society.' I grant it is insignificant in itself and ridiculous to every thinking man; but it serves a certain purpose. Such forms are marks of distinction between cultivated and uncultivated people. Just because they are so insignificant the uninitiated never pay any heed to them. But, although clad in purple and fine linen, ignorance of such trifles betrays the parvenu. Those who desire, like yourself, to enter circles to which they do not belong by birth, must find out all their conventional secrets, in order not to be disgraced."

"Oh, what a moral discourse!" sighed Bertha. "I have had enough for to-day. You are a thoroughly heartless man, and were kind to me only as long as you needed me. I must bear what comes, for I am poor and helpless since I broke with my father,--but you have tired me out, I a.s.sure you."

"And if this fatigue were an overpowering sensation, you would separate yourself from me; but since you are fond of the rest that I can provide you, there will be an enduring bond between us. I shall magnanimously treat you as my wife as long as you give me no legal ground for divorce; therefore, be composed; your future lot is a thousand times more brilliant than you had any right to expect."

Bertha arose, and was about to reply, but her husband commanded silence by so imperious a gesture that she swallowed down her anger and hastened from the room, sobbing violently. In the kitchen the maid was just taking the cake that she had made from the oven. It was successful--it was most beautiful! The servant placed it near the open window to cool. Bertha contemplated it mournfully. How much pains she had taken! how stiff the eggs had been beaten! how well it had risen!

and no one cared anything about it! Did her cross husband deserve that she should prepare such a delicacy for him? Should he devour this masterpiece? Yet there it was,--so round and high, so brown and fragrant, that she gradually dried her tears, and was filled with more agreeable sensations and a pardonable pride. No one except herself possessed the receipt for this cake. No one else could make it. She thought with rapture of the delight of those who should in future partake of it at her table,--of the consideration that she should enjoy on account of it; and, thinking thus, her good humour returned, and she determined not to hide her light under a bushel, and punish her husband by withholding the cake from him, but to parade it before him; he should see what a woman he had treated so unkindly could do. When he tasted this cake he would repent his harshness! She took the plate and carried it on high into the dining-room, where she placed it before her husband with exultation.

"Yes, that is really beautiful," he said approvingly, looking first at the round, beautiful cake, and then at the plump, pretty baker; and his approbation exalted Bertha to the highest pitch of satisfaction, so that she felt morally justified in asking for a gla.s.s of champagne. Her husband removed the cork without allowing it to snap and disturb the decorum of the house of mourning, and then poured out a sparkling b.u.mper for her.

"Come," she said, "we will clink gla.s.ses, and drink to the welfare of the good Hartwich, who has made us rich!"

"Yes, now that he is dead, may he live forever," said Leuthold smiling, and gently touching his wife's gla.s.s with his own,--"live forever in that heaven where I trust he may experience all the delight that his wealth will afford us here on earth."

They emptied their gla.s.ses, and Bertha ran into the adjoining room, where Gretchen was taking her noonday nap. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the sleeping child from the bed, shook it, and cried, "Come, wake up, and you shall have some cake!"

The little thing, interrupted in its nap, was frightened and began to scream, refusing to be quieted until her father filled her mouth with the promised delicacy and dandled her in his arms.

"You do not even understand how to take care of your own child,"

murmured Leuthold. "What will you do when our niece comes to us?"

"What!" cried Bertha, "must I have the care of the disagreeable creature?"

"She will come to me--yes."

"But we will send her to boarding-school--you promised me!"

"If Ernestine recovers, as she may do under old Heim's care, she will be too weak for months to be sent among strangers without incurring the reproach of the world. You will be obliged, therefore, to submit to having her with us until such time as we can be rid of her decently. I a.s.sure you she shall stay no longer than is absolutely necessary. And now pray be quiet, and do not embitter this day by complaints."