Waldfried Part 19

"Yes," said Bertha, "my husband has often noticed that Victor bears great resemblance to Ernst."

"And Uncle Ernst promised me a horse," said Victor.

"Did he?" said my wife, with pleased looks: "If he did that, it is all right, but sad enough for all. Still, others have their burdens to bear as well as we."

Martella's first meeting with Bertha as well as with Annette, resulted in mutual attraction.

Bertha was obliged to tell Martella all that she knew about Ernst, and while she was holding the hand of the strange child, the latter must have felt a consciousness of the candor and straightforwardness of Bertha's character, for she looked into her face with sparkling eyes.

Martella asked Bertha whether Ernst had sent the broken ring by her.

Bertha said he had not.

She removed a ring from her finger and offered it to Martella, who declined it.

When Annette offered both her hands to Martella, and said that she had for a long while been anxious to make her acquaintance, Martella was quite confused, and looked down towards the ground. When she raised her head, her eyes fell on a light green necktie which Annette wore.

"How pretty it is!" were her first words.

Annette immediately removed the tie, and fastened it about Martella's neck.

"It is quite warm, yet," said Martella; and Annette replied, "How lovely! Let us regard that as a good omen."

When Bertha, who rarely gave way to sentiment, returned and joined us again, she said, "Let us now be thrice as kind and loving to one another as we have been, and be indulgent with each other's moods. It is only by such means that we can manage to live through these terrible times."

Bertha and her daughter Clotilde, a charming, graceful child about nine years of age, were so clever in antic.i.p.ating every wish of my wife's, that, although it had always been her wont to be serving others and providing for their comfort, she was now obliged to let them have their own way.

Martella seemed almost inseparable from Rothfuss, and Victor was always with the two. He accompanied them out to the fields and into the woods; and it was difficult to say which of the two was the happier, Rothfuss the old, or Victor the young, child.

It would have been difficult also to say which of the two, Victor or Martella, cut wilder capers, for the young play-fellow with the soldier cap seemed to make her forget all her trouble. She was quite proud of her skill in leaping, and loved to display it.

Bertha maintained that, in spite of rough manners, many of Martella's movements were full of wondrous grace; and when she would turn around five or six times on one foot, Victor could never imitate her.

On the very day of her arrival, Annette awakened great interest in the village.

She ascended to the top of the church steeple, where none of us had ever been. She waved her handkerchief from the little window in the belfry, until we took notice of her and returned her salute. All of the villagers who were not engaged in the fields had gathered in groups, and were looking up at the church steeple.

When she joined us at dinner, she told us that she had already found out everything. The school-master had told her of the woods that had been planted by my wife, that she had already been at the Gustava Spring, and that the water had tasted as if it were pure dew.

"Ah, how fortunate you are to own all this! The very air you breathe is your own."

She talked incessantly, and many of her remarks were quite entertaining. She plied Richard with so many questions that he looked quite displeased, and soon left the table.

"I can tell by the professor's looks that he is musical; is he not?"

"Indeed he is; he is esteemed an excellent violincello player."

"I can a.s.sure you that I asked no one, and I am so glad that my intuitions did not deceive me."

While Annette was paying a visit to the school-mistress, Richard gave vent to his anger at her; but my wife pacified him. Annette could not enjoy the quiet possession of anything, and was always anxious to impart what she knew and felt to others. She was evidently of a very hospitable nature, and would, in good time, acquire repose of manner.

During the first few days, while we were yet without news of any kind, and before the journals had given us any information as to the movements of the troops, Annette did not allow us to get a moment's rest.

The way she worried us all, and Richard in particular, was quite provoking; and yet this lesser trouble made us forget the greater one.

My father-in-law had converted the large corner room on the ground floor of our house into a veritable temple of beauty. He had, from time to time, purchased casts of the best antique statues, and had carefully arranged them along the walls and on pedestals, placing beautiful engravings between them.

He had thus brought the immortal types of beauty into the depths of the forest. The room in which he had placed the statues, and which Richard jokingly ent.i.tled "Athens," was a favorite haunt of ours.

Annette was greatly surprised to find such treasures with us, and said to Richard, "These undying types of a past great civilization are at home everywhere. It is because they no longer have, and indeed never did have, anything in common with the life of fas.h.i.+on, that they are thus immortal. Do you not agree with me?"

She always insisted on having an answer to her questions. Then she would briskly add: "Now I understand the meaning of the Niobe; she is the old spinner who lives out on the rock." When we laughed at this conceit of hers, she told us, "Oh! I beg your pardon, I mean that she is the embodiment of a mother's grief in time of war."

Pointing to a statue of Iphigenia, she inquired, "Herr Professor, can you tell me how the Grecian priestesses spent their time? Do you think it possible to be constantly offering sacrifices and uttering lofty thoughts?"

Richard admitted that he could not give her the desired information; and Annette was quite delighted that she had posed the professor. She did not give up troubling him, however.

All her notions of life in the country had been derived from books, and she was quite shocked to find that the mere money value or utility of trees was the only point of view in which they were regarded.

Notwithstanding her overflowing, emotional temperament, she had quite a taste for details, and even for figures. At the first sight of a prettily situated village, she would always make inquiries in regard to the number of its inhabitants, their means, and manner of living. I was obliged to tell her all about my own household--how many acres of timber there were ready to cut, and how much was young timber; the amount of our annual production, how much live-stock my meadows would support, how much fruit my orchards gave me, and also how the work was divided amongst the four men-servants and three maids that we employed.

She examined the whole establishment, from the stable to the loft. She seemed to take especial delight in the happy combination we had effected between the fruits of culture and the pursuit of husbandry.

There was a certain air of solid comfort and good taste in our home. It had descended from the times of my father-in-law, and had been kept up by us.

With good judgment, Annette thought that the very best site had been selected for our house. The hill beyond the hollow at the back of the house protected us on three sides, but was not near enough to deprive us of fresh air, or to keep out the gentle breezes that would come up from the valley after sunset and carry away the miasmatic vapors, thus affording us healthful and refres.h.i.+ng sleep during the night. A barn, which the meadow farmer had so placed that it destroyed part of the view down the valley, was a great eyesore to Annette.

She asked Richard why the air with us was so cool and invigorating, and was very grateful when he explained the theory of the dew-fall to her.

She was full of charming ingenuousness, for she once said. "I do not doubt that you enjoy the singing of the birds, but I honestly confess that I do not. It is pleasant to know that the little animal up in the trees is so joyful; but, nevertheless, there is no beauty in tones without connection or expression. I find that there are no more tones in the scale of the finch than in that of the barn-yard rooster; and why do we prefer the notes of the finch?"

Richard often felt annoyed that Annette was constantly keeping every one about her on pins and needles, and seemed to desire his special approval of all that she did. He maintained that she was entirely deficient in mental balance.

The temperaments of Annette and Bertha were in marked contrast to each other.

When they were seated opposite each other and engaged in conversation, Bertha would bend forward, while Annette would lean back in her chair, as if immovable.

Bertha's mere presence exerted a grateful influence, while Annette felt that she must always be doing something, in order to inspire others with an interest in her.

Bertha, with all her affection for Martella, remained somewhat reserved towards her, while Annette was open and confiding, as with a sister.

She was incapable of any other relations than those of perfect intimacy or absolute indifference.

Richard noticed all these peculiarities, and when he mentioned them to me, I was almost startled to find how carefully he had been observing Annette.

He was obliged, however, to agree with my wife when she said, "Annette's habit of requiring her friends to interest themselves in whatever engages her attention, is both innocent and childlike. A child will always think that its whip or its ball is of as much importance to others as to itself. Bear in mind, moreover, that Annette takes a lively interest in all that others do, and naturally enough supposes that they resemble her in that respect."

Annette had gone from the school-house one day, to pay a visit to my nephew Joseph, who was a friend of her brother, the lawyer, who resided in the capital. She found that there were well-furnished rooms in his house, and a few days later removed there. She frankly admitted that she was too noisy for our home, and that it were better that she should visit us for a few hours at a time, instead of living with us.

She at once set about rearranging the furniture and removing unnecessary decorations in her new quarters; and, on the next day, while the carpenters were busily engaged in making the changes she had ordered, she drove over to the city to visit the family of the kreis-director, with whom she had formerly been intimate.