The Undying Past Part 54

"That's what I mean too."

"And it seems to you quite natural?"

"Really, I should not have thought you so inexperienced," said the little lady. "One's bound to know such things. In old days it was much worse. The man who was a brave knight _always_ loved the wife of some one else. To love his own would have been thought ridiculous.... It is all in Konig's 'Unabridged History of Literature.'"

Hertha had become very thoughtful. "Ah! the olden times," she said, with a faint smile. "It's no good talking of them. They tilted at tournaments then, and killed each other with their lances for fun!"

"And to-day," said Elly in a whisper, raising herself in bed with the wide eyes of a child reading a fairy tale, "to-day they shoot each other dead with pistols for a joke instead."

Hertha felt a stab at her hearty and the little rosy daughter of Eve went on.

"I should think it lovely to have such an unhappy affair when married.... For, you know, most of the romantic love stories are of this kind."

"Who told you so?"

"Don't you remember what Kathi Graffenstein said about her aunt?"

"Pah!" cried Hertha. "Whatever _she_ said about it would sure to be a lie."

The conversation ceased at this point, for, after Elly letting fall the much-hated name, Hertha refused to talk any more. But long after the light had been put out she lay awake pondering, and tried by various experimental thoughts to penetrate the veil which hung between her childlike outlook and life. The next afternoon she approached, with faltering step, kind grandmamma, whose wooden knitting-needles were busily employed on one of her favourite Shetland wool shawls.

"Have you an uneasy conscience?" asked grandmamma, who thought she knew what she wanted.

"G.o.d forbid! I only wish to know, am I properly grown up, or am I not?"

"Well ... half and half," suggested grandmamma, giving her a smiling scrutiny over her spectacles.

Hertha drew a deep breath. She had entered on a daring enterprise, she knew, but, at all costs, she must clear up this matter.

"I mean that I shall probably soon be married, and I----"

"You!" exclaimed grandmamma, in deadly terror.

The unhappy child had evidently come to break to her the proposal of some saucy youth in the neighbourhood.

"Of course ...," continued Hertha, mouthing her words, ... "of course ... with all my money I am not likely to be an old maid."

Grandmamma caught hold of her hands. "Child, whom have you got in your mind?" she cried, beginning to perspire with anxiety.

Hertha blushed to the roots of her hair. "I? ... n.o.body," she stuttered, struggling to maintain a nonchalant tone.

"You are talking indefinitely?"

"Yes ... of course ... indefinitely."

Grandmamma ventured to breathe more freely again, and determined forthwith that she would talk seriously to Leo that very day, and warn him that the "gold fish" might be snapped up, by some one else under his very eyes, if he did not look out.

"And ... now let me hear what you want to know."

"I want to know ... about love ... after marriage."

Grandmamma, who was used to these sort of questions, though lately they had been less frequent than of old, replied lightly, "It's the same after as before."

"Yes ... I know. But if there's another ... to whom one is not married ..."

"Gracious! _what_?" Grandmamma let her gla.s.ses fall off her nose in sheer horrified amazement. "What other?"

Hertha felt a sudden collapse of her heart-strings. She had to make energetic demands on her courage to be able to proceed.

"Can't it happen, dear grandmamma, that some one who isn't married to us, can get into his head ..."

"Hertha," interrupted the old lady, "look me straight in the eyes and tell me if you have been reading a forbidden book."

"How could I, grandmamma?"

"What are you reading now?"

"Oh, a yarn that Meta Podewyl lent me."

"We say story, not yarn. Who wrote it?"

"Felix Dahn."

"And what is it about?"

"I hardly know. Some one is always being stabbed dead by some one else.

Some of them come to life again, and some of them are buried. There's no harm in that."

"No, certainly there is no harm in that," thought grandmamma; and then she said, "Don't come to me with such stupid questions again, child ...

you are too young by far to understand such things. And now give me a kiss, and take your crochet."

So another plan had failed. Yet Hertha went on wondering how she was to solve the dark mystery with which her jealous heart was so blindly grappling.

The same day at dinner Leo made the unexpected proposal of rowing her and Elly over to the Isle of Friends.h.i.+p. He knew how long Hertha had cherished the wish to see with her own eyes the romantic spot, and thought that by giving her her desire he would improve the relations between them, which, he didn't know why, seemed to grow more strained from day to day.

But Hertha slightly curled her lips and remarked, "Many thanks; when I care to visit the island, I will row myself over."

"You'll try again?" he laughed.

"Yes, why not? There are two boats there now, and you can't want more than one at a time when you happen to be visiting Uhlenfelde."

There was something in her p.r.o.nunciation of the last few words which vexed and irritated him.

"Nevertheless, my dear child," he replied, "I must ask you kindly to refrain from any more mad escapades; there really is no necessity for you periodically to rouse the neighbourhood."

"I promise you that I shall give you no further ground for complaint on that score," she made answer with quivering lips.

He nodded, immediately pacified, and grandmamma changed the topic to household matters.