The Eichhofs Part 26

Alma was only lending half an ear to the woman's chatter, and it was more out of kindness than from interest that she asked, "Indeed? How so?"

Marianne put on an air of mystery. "Ah, you see, 'tis a long story. You look like somebody," she replied.

"Indeed?"

"Somebody who is dead; of course it was a woman," Marianne chattered on. "She had braids just like yours. Now your hair is down, I can see that she had the very same. And she had blue eyes, too, and was so like you in some way, I cannot exactly tell how; but as soon as you came you reminded me of her, and our doctor saw it too,--I knew that in a moment, for I know him well."

"Well, and who was this other?" Alma asked, with more interest.

Marianne sighed, and then told Alma of the unfortunate young woman whom her doctor had once intrusted to her care. "And only think, Fraulein dear, the woman had once been so rich that she did not know what to do with her money, and--but this is a secret; I only happen to know it because my husband, who is dead, was once a footman in her house. Only since you look so like her I'll tell it to you. Well, our doctor loved this woman dearly when she was a girl. But he was very young, and the girl's parents, and the girl herself, perhaps, thought he was not rich enough for her. At all events, she wouldn't marry him, and that's the only reason why he has never married, although now he might choose a wife where he would and thank you, too. But he cannot forget his Hedwig. And when he found her so sick and miserable, and got me to nurse her, and then at last when she died, any one could see how fond he was of her. Our doctor is an angel to all sick people, but then--then he was something more."

Alma listened now with keen interest, and was almost sorry when Marianne had finished arranging her room for the night and was obliged to attend to some other patients.

"Yes, yes, Fraulein dear, the best of men must have trials. Well, good-night."

And the nurse left the room, and Alma was again alone at the window.

And so this calm, grave Dr. Nordstedt had also lived through his romance. He had lost his love, and lost her so cruelly! "Poor man!"

Alma whispered, thinking of what she had just heard. Then she heard footsteps on the garden gravel path below her window. She leaned out, and saw a tall, manly figure slowly walking towards the house. She hurriedly withdrew, as though fearing that the doctor might suspect that she was thinking of him and that she knew his secret. Still, she no longer felt lonely as before; it was a certain consolation to her to reflect that in the heart of the man walking alone beneath the trees on this sultry evening there might perhaps be thoughts similar to her own.

From this day it was not grat.i.tude solely that prompted her to observe the doctor with greater interest than hitherto. There seemed a certain resemblance between his fate and her own. She thought she could understand him; and when he paced the garden to and fro alone in the evening, and she stood alone at her window, she thought that surely there was some mysterious sympathy between them.

Thus some time pa.s.sed, and at last Frau von Rosen was allowed to leave her room. When she spent an hour for the first time in an arbour in the garden, Herr von Hohenstein and his daughter came to wish their old friend joy in her restoration to health, and to inform her at the same time that Herr von Hohenstein had purchased a country-house with a little land, and that they were to occupy it the ensuing week. The house was in the vicinity of one of the larger cities of their native province, and Adela was enthusiastic in her praises of its lovely situation, while her head was filled with plans for gardens of roses, asparagus-beds, dove-cotes, and chicken-yards. Herr von Hohenstein, who had entirely recovered his health, although he was greatly changed and found his memory often defective, so that he was obliged to turn to Adela for aid, agreed to everything, and spoke of employing his leisure in the quiet of the country, if his strength admitted of it, in collecting his varied experience on the subject of the breeding of horses, and in publis.h.i.+ng it for the use and enlightenment of posterity. Adela had taken a pencil out of her pocket, and was just about to draw a ground-plan of her future home on a leaf of her note-book for Alma, when a shadow fell upon her paper, and a familiar voice that had not fallen upon her ears for a long time bade 'good-morning' to the little circle in the arbour. Adela started up and confronted Walter Eichhof. Perhaps each was at first inclined, so unexpected was this meeting, to run away; but Adela was imprisoned in the arbour, and Dr. Nordstedt's broad shoulders appeared just behind Walter. As there was no way of avoiding each other, they each had recourse to the same line of conduct; Walter devoted himself to the Rosens, and Adela found inexhaustible matter for conversation with Dr.

Nordstedt in his establishment and his methods of treatment, in which she expressed the greatest interest. Both Walter and Adela, however, took occasion to scan each other furtively, and at times replied rather vaguely to remarks addressed to them, from an anxiety on the part of each to hear what the other was saying. At last Dr. Nordstedt expressed a fear lest so much conversation around her might fatigue Frau von Rosen, and proposed that she should be left for a while with the Baron von Hohenstein, while he conducted Walter and the young ladies through the garden, and the establishment in which Fraulein von Hohenstein expressed such an interest.

Adela immediately declared herself ready to go, and, as Walter was standing by Alma's side, it fell to Dr. Nordstedt to conduct Fraulein von Hohenstein. He showed them through various rooms in the house, and told them how they had been enlarged to their present size from small beginnings, until he had ended by adding the present s.p.a.cious wings to the original mansion. The waiting-rooms were filled with all kinds of costly _objets d'art_, mementos from grateful patients from near and far. Adela, who had chattered fast enough at first, gradually became silent, and looked up with a kind of awe at the tall, serious man who had made himself what he was. Then she cast a stolen glance at Walter.

He was right to be proud of this friend, she thought, and then she wondered whether Walter possessed sufficient energy and industry to be like him. She could not but observe meanwhile that in the course of the last year Walter had grown far more manly, and at last she arrived at the conclusion that she never should suspect either Walter or Dr.

Nordstedt of being doctors if she had not known about them. The image of a 'doctor' in her mind was inseparably connected with a large pair of spectacles and a strong odour of ether,--both attributes of the family physician at Rollin, and of a certain professor who had been called in at the time of her father's illness. They had hitherto been the only representatives of the medical profession known to her.

"Fraulein Alma would like to see your study," Walter suddenly said to Nordstedt, who turned to the girl with a smile, and said,--

"You have seen it already, Fraulein von Rosen. It is the little room I showed you where I performed my first successful operation. When one wishes to work, any decoration around one has a disturbing influence, I think; and then, too, I like old places, and so I stayed there with my books."

"For the first time I cannot agree with you," cried Adela. "Whoever has any taste for the beautiful must like to see it around him."

Nordstedt laughed. "You are right," he rejoined; "but beauty incites me either to enjoyment or to dreamy revery, and neither is any a.s.sistance to hard work."

"But, lest the ladies should think you a scorner of the beautiful, you must open your music-room for us," said Walter.

This Nordstedt did with pleasure. He certainly was much more talkative and less reserved than usual to-day. Walter wondered whether Adela's gay humour had wrought this change. Although he was firmly convinced that he himself had entirely ceased to think of Adela, he found this suspicion far from agreeable.

As they entered the music-room both the girls uttered an exclamation of delight. The furniture, the hangings, the pictures on the walls, all gave evidence of genuine taste and a fine artistic perception.

"Yes, the requirements of art differ from those of labour," said Nordstedt. "Art gives beauty and must have beauty."

And everything in this room was beautiful. From the grand piano to the smallest footstool, all was perfect of its kind. Adela's admiration was loudly expressed, Alma's was silent. But whenever she lifted her eyes they were sure to encounter Nordstedt's glance seeking hers. "Do you love music?" he asked, suddenly stepping to her side.

"Dearly!" she replied.

He went to the piano, and played one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words. Walter stood at a window, looking very grave. Nordstedt never played before strangers. What had come over him to-day? And how devoutly Adela was listening! Walter wished he had not come here to-day, and the brighter his friend's face grew the gloomier he felt.

The song that Nordstedt had chosen was one of those brief melancholy strains that suggest a lament. When he had finished, Alma said, "That song is one of my favourites. It is so fervent, and yet so sad. It sounds as if one were thinking of some one loved and lost----"

Nordstedt turned upon her one brief questioning glance of surprise.

Alma blushed, fearing that she had said too much. But Adela, who generally said whatever came into her head without reflecting, exclaimed, as she looked admiringly at Nordstedt, "Why, you can do everything! You give me an entirely different idea of doctors from any I have ever had before!"

Scarcely had the words left her lips when she, too, blushed crimson to the roots of her hair, for she remembered that Walter heard what she said. She was glad that Nordstedt proposed returning to Frau von Rosen, who ought now to be taken to her room. Without waiting for the escort of the two gentlemen, she took Alma's arm, and ran, rather than walked, along the corridor into the garden, while the young men silently followed them. Nordstedt's face was bright with a smile, but Walter was annoyed and discontented with himself, with Adela, with everybody. He was more startled than pleased when Adela offered him her hand at parting and said, softly, "It has given me great pleasure to see you again." He replied only by a low, formal bow. He wandered about the loneliest streets on this evening until ten o'clock, and at last closed his door behind him and threw himself upon his lounge, saying, "And yet I wish I had not seen her again!"

CHAPTER XXI.

SUMMER DAYS.

Broad sunlight lay upon the comfortable mansion of Schonthal. Frau von Rosen was better than she had been for years, but she was still obliged to spare her eyes, and so Alma had undertaken to advise Dr. Nordstedt from time to time of the condition of his patient. The less there was to tell of her, however, the more there always seemed to be to say.

Nordstedt was now looked upon by the whole family more as a friend than as a physician, and, busy as he might be, he always found time to answer Alma's letters. As Walter was to spend his summer holidays at Schonthal, Herr von Rosen invited Dr. Nordstedt to pay them a visit at the same time.

"But, papa, what are you thinking of? He never will come," said Alma.

Nevertheless he came.

"What a pity it is that Thea has not yet come home!" said Alma. "She would be so much pleased with Dr. Nordstedt, and he would like her so much."

Frau von Rosen gazed thoughtfully at her daughter. How did she know so well whom Dr. Nordstedt would like? She began to shake her head, but not for long, for Nordstedt had grown dear to her, and she only glanced shyly now and then at her husband, wondering if the same thoughts that had occurred to her had been suggested to him also, and what he would say. But it really was all his fault. Why had he invited the doctor to the house?

One evening Herr von Rosen said to her, "We are thought to be people of very advanced ideas, mamma. Do you not think we should justify the opinion entertained of us if we chanced some day to marry our daughter to a man of the people?"

"It seems to me," she replied, "that everything would depend upon who the man was, and what confidence we could repose in him."

"Aha! Then, in principle, you would not be opposed to such a match? Of course, I am only discussing such things in general."

"In general, then, I have no objection to the bourgeoisie, although I once thought I could favour none save sons-in-law of rank. But what is the use of growing older if one grows no wiser?"

Then there was a pause, which was ended by Herr von Rosen's saying, "Alma certainly never would have been happy with Lothar Eichhof."

Frau von Rosen sighed. She laid her hand on her husband's shoulder, and said, softly, "Do you think Thea is happy?"

"Ah! her letters have struck you too?"

"Not only that, but she has now been three months away from Eichhof. It was all very well for her to go to the baths, but to visit my sister afterward and stay there so long,--I cannot understand it. Mountain air is good for the child, she says. Possibly; but Eichhof air would be equally good for him. And we so seldom see anything of Bernhard----"

"Bernhard has a great deal to do at present."

"Ah, my dear, I can easily see that you do not believe that to be the only reason. I often lie awake thinking of it all. I cannot comprehend it."

"Wait until Thea comes home. She is a clever woman, and she loves Bernhard; she will make matters all right again. You remember how she behaved about his agricultural interests. At all events, we must know nothing until we are told. Not even a parent should interfere between man and wife."