The Breaking of the Storm Volume Ii Part 22

"Because she sees in you her ideal."

"In you, I should think."

"Don't talk such nonsense, Justus!"

"Not at all. She fairly raves about you; she talks about nothing but you. Only yesterday she said to me that she hoped to live to see you as happy as you deserved to be, on which I ventured to observe that I considered you as one of the happiest men under the sun, notwithstanding your temporary want of employment, whereupon she shook her pretty head and said, 'The best indeed, but happy?' and shook her head again. Now I only ask you! You not happy!"

And Justus whistled the tune of "Happy only is the soul that loves,"

and exclaimed, "There, now I have got rid of the wrinkles in your forehead, and now we will stop for today, or we shall make a mess of it again, as we did yesterday evening."

He sprinkled his figures with water, wrapped Reinhold's half-finished head in wet cloths, and wiped his hands.

"There, I am ready!"

"Won't you at least shut your desk?" said Reinhold, pointing to a worm-eaten old piece of furniture, on and in which Justus's letters and other papers were wont to lie about.

"What for?" said Justus. "No one is likely to touch the rubbish.

Antonio will put it all in order; Antonio is order itself. Antonio!"

The other workmen had already left the studio; only Antonio was still busying himself in the twilight.

"Put these things a little tidy, Antonio. Come!"

The two young men left the studio.

"Do not you leave too much in Antonio's hands?" asked Reinhold.

"How so?"

"I do not trust that Italian; so little indeed that I have repeatedly fancied that the fellow must have had a hand in betraying Ferdinanda."

Justus laughed. "Really, my dear Reinhold, I begin to think that Cilli was right, and that you are an unhappy man! How can a happy man torment himself with such horrid ideas? I will just run up and make myself tidy. You go on, I will follow you in five minutes."

Justus was just hastening away, when the door of Ferdinanda's studio opened, and a lady came out dressed entirely in black, and m.u.f.fled in a thick black veil. She hesitated for a moment when she saw the two, and then with hasty step and bent head pa.s.sed them on her way to the yard.

The two friends thought at the first moment that it was Ferdinanda herself; but Ferdinanda was taller, and this was not her figure or walk.

"But who else could it have been?" asked Reinhold.

"I do not know," said Justus. "Perhaps a model--there are shy models. I hope at any rate that it was one. It would be the best sign that she was going to work again, that is to say to come to her senses."

Justus sprang up the steps which led to his apartment. Reinhold continued on his way. As he turned the corner of the building, the black figure was just disappearing through the entrance to the house.

Antonio also, who had begun to tidy Justus's desk as soon as the two friends had left the studio, had observed the lady in black as she glided past the window. He threw the papers which he held in his hand into the desk, and was about to rush out, but remembered that he could not follow her in his working dress, and stopped with much annoyance.

The lady in black had been with Ferdinanda at the same hour yesterday, but as the studio was full, he had not been able to make his observations through the door. She was no model--he knew better than that! But who could it be, if not an emissary from the man he hated?

Perhaps she would come for the third time at a more convenient hour. He must find out!

He returned to the desk. "Bah!" said he, "what is there to be found here? accounts, orders--the old story! And what use is it to listen to their conversation? Always the same empty chatter. I can't think why he wants to know what the Captain talks about to the maestro!"

He knew that Ferdinanda was no longer in her study, but yet his gleaming eyes remained fixed on her door as he sat here brooding in the twilight.

"I will do everything that he commands. He is very wise, very powerful, and very wealthy; but what good can he do here? Is not she now even more unhappy than she was before? And if she should ever find out that it was I--but the signer is right there, one thing always remains to me--the last, best of all--revenge!"

CHAPTER VII.

Latterly, while Ferdinanda still kept her bed, Uncle Ernst hardly left his room, and the Schmidt family circle therefore was to a great extent broken up, the two friends had divided their evenings between it and the Kreisels pretty regularly as they said, or very irregularly as Aunt Rikchen said. Reinhold was forced to agree with his aunt, and attempted no further excuses, as he did not want to tell any untruths, and could not acknowledge the true reason. The real truth was that his aunt's perpetual complaints threatened to destroy his last remnant of cheerfulness, while on the contrary he found the comfort and consolation that he so greatly needed in the atmosphere of suns.h.i.+ne which the sweet blind girl diffused around her. Latterly, indeed, even this suns.h.i.+ne had been a little clouded. The two friends had a suspicion, which they did not however impart to the poor girl, that the eccentric old gentleman, having made up his mind, as he said, that he could no longer with honour remain a Socialist, had sacrificed his dislike to speculation to the darling wish of his heart, to provide for Cilli after his own death, and had been speculating eagerly with the scanty means that he had toilsomely sc.r.a.ped together in the course of years. He was very mysterious about it indeed, and denied it roundly when Justus laughingly taxed him with it; but Justus would not be deceived, and even thought he could gather, from a casual expression the other had let fall, that it was the doubtful star of the Berlin-Sundin Railway to which the old man had confided the fragile bark of his fortunes. It seemed some confirmation of this opinion that latterly, when the almost worthless shares had become, in consequence of the new and dazzling prospectus, an object of the wildest speculation, and had consequently risen to double their value, the old gentleman's cheerfulness had returned also, and he had even ventured upon some of the dry witticisms which he only uttered when he was in the brightest spirits. Cilli said that now everything went well with her, and Reinhold, as she a.s.serted this with her sweet smile, tried to stifle another and much worse anxiety--an anxiety which he had once hinted to Justus, whereupon the latter had replied in his careless fas.h.i.+on: "Nonsense! Love is a weakness, angels have no weaknesses; Cilli is an angel, and so--basta!"

He found Cilli alone in the modest little sitting-room, in the act of arranging the tea-things on the little round table in front of the hard, faded old sofa. She performed such small household duties with a confidence which would have quite deceived a stranger as to her infirmity, and with a grace which always had a fresh charm for Reinhold. She would not permit any a.s.sistance either. "It is cruel,"

said she, "not to let me do the little that I can do."

So he sat now in the sofa corner, which was always his place--the other belonged to her father when he came in from the office--and looked on as she came and went with her gliding step, and as often as she returned to the table seemed smilingly to bid him welcome again and again.

"Where is Justus!" asked she.

"He has just gone to dress."

"How far has he got with you?"

"I shall be finished to-morrow, or the day after."

"Then it will be my turn; I am looking forward to it so--I mean to the portrait. I should so like to know what I look like. However often I do so"--she drew her soft finger slowly along her profile--"and that is just like looking in the gla.s.s, yet you never know how you look till a great artist shows it to you in your portrait. Justus is going to do me in life-size too."

"But he might have given you that small satisfaction long ago."

"It is not a small thing, even though he does work so wonderfully quick," answered Cilli eagerly; "every hour, every minute is precious to him; he owes them all to his work. Now that he can make use of me for his work, it is different of course."

"Do you know then, dear Cilli, what we all look like?"

"Perfectly; you are a tall man, with curly hair and beard, and a broad forehead, and blue eyes. Justus is not so tall, is he?"

"He is a little shorter, dear Cilli."

"But only a very little," Cilli went on triumphantly; "and his hair is not so thick, is it?"

The last words were said with some hesitation.

"Not at the temples, dear Cilli."

"Only not at the temples, of course!" said Cilli quickly; "but his great beauty is in his eyes--great, flas.h.i.+ng artist's eyes, which can take in a whole world! Oh, I know what you both look like, and my father too! I could draw his portrait!"

She laughed happily and then suddenly became grave.

"That is why I am distressed, too, when the faces I love are not cheerful. Justus's face is always cheerful, but then he is an artist, and can only live in suns.h.i.+ne; my father, too, has recovered his old cheerfulness, and now you must return to what you were at first--do you remember?"

"Indeed I do, dear Cilli. So many things have happened since then; you know what I mean. They have troubled me, and trouble me still. And then Justus is right, I am an idler; I must manage to get to work again."