The Romance of the Canoness Part 17

"Do you intend to part with the child?"

"Yes, dear friend," she replied, her brows contracting with an expression of pain. "How I am to bear it I do not know. But my resolution is fixed. He must grow up in a perfectly pure atmosphere.

While he is a child, I guard him myself. But how long will that be?

Even now it is almost impossible for me to reconcile all my duties.

When I go to the rehearsals I am compelled to trust him to Kunigunde, who is an excellent person, but does not always take the right course with him, and he shall not accompany me to the theatre. It would be worse than if I were to give him brandy to drink, instead of milk."

Then we grew silent. "Poor woman!" a voice in my heart continually repeated; "you are indeed lonely."

Meantime we had returned to the town, and then something happened, whose memory even now makes my heart throb faster.

When we entered the courtyard of the commandant's residence, my companion's first glance sought the windows of her room. She suddenly grasped my arm as if to save herself from falling, and I asked in alarm if she were ill. But, as I looked up, a thrill of horror ran through my frame also. For at the open window I saw the child, who had climbed out on the sill, clinging with one little arm to the sash and stretching out the other toward a drooping chestnut bough, whose ripening nuts had probably roused his longing. As in his eagerness he held one little foot suspended in the air, he seemed fairly hovering aloft with but the feeblest support, and an icy chill crept down my back.

Suddenly I heard the mother say in her gentlest voice: "Wouldn't it be better for me to get you the beautiful chestnuts, Joachimchen? You shall have a whole handful, if you are a good boy and climb down again at once. Do what your mother tells you, my darling. I am coming up directly. Then you shall show Uncle Johannes how to make a chain of chestnuts."

The smiling boy looked down at us, nodded to his mother, cautiously drew first his foot and then his arm back from the giddy height, and quickly disappeared inside the dark frame of the window.

My own heart had fairly stopped beating. When I could breathe again, I wanted to tell my companion how much I admired her for having had courage to repress any cry of terror that might have startled the little one and perhaps hurled him to destruction. But the words died on my lips, for the next instant she had thrown her arms around my neck, and, with her face hidden on my breast, burst into such convulsive sobs that I was forced to exert all my strength, to support the tall, n.o.ble figure in its helpless emotion.

She did not regain her self-control until we heard steps in the gateway, then, still clinging to my arm, she hurried into the rear building and up the stairs. "Not a word about it to anybody!" she whispered. At the top she stood still, panting for breath, and pa.s.sed her hand over her eyes. At last she rushed to her room, on whose threshold the child met her, and clasped her sole happiness in her arms with a cry of rapture in which all the pent-up excitement of the mother's heart found utterance.

When, soon after, her husband entered, nothing but her unwonted pallor and a tremor, which still ever and anon ran through her limbs, could have betrayed to him that anything unusual had occurred. He, however, in his jovial self-satisfaction, was so exclusively absorbed in himself--having just purchased a new neck-tie which he meant to wear at dinner--that he noticed no change in her. And there was no one else at the table who took any special heed of her, except a young girl of fourteen--the daughter of the Selmar couple--who had been too ill to appear at dinner the day before. She went to Frau Luise, pressed her hand affectionately, and anxiously asked if she were well. "Oh!

perfectly well," replied the happy mother, smiling, as she kissed the girl's cheek and inquired about her own doings. The dinner pa.s.sed off very much like the one of the previous day, except that the manager regretted he could not drink my health in a gla.s.s of wine as a token of grat.i.tude for my admirable prompting. But the rigid law of the household prohibited all spirituous drinks until the evening--and he cast a glance of comic terror at his wife.

I saw that she found it difficult to maintain her a.s.sumed cheerfulness, and when we rose her knees trembled. So I suggested in a low tone that she should lie down for a time and trust the boy to me for the afternoon. She a.s.sented with a grateful glance and pressure of the hand.

When, at the end of a few hours, I brought the child--with whom I had formed the closest friends.h.i.+p--back to his mother, I found her sitting by the very window at which she had gazed with so much horror. She was still quiet and pale, like a person just recovering from a dangerous illness, but I had never seen her look more beautiful and charming, and felt that the duty of self-defense required me to take leave of her now. I could not come to her room after the play, so we shook hands without uttering what was oppressing each heart; I kissed the child, for the last time as I supposed, and, in a mood well worthy of compa.s.sion, left these two beloved beings expecting never to see them again.

When the evening performances ended, amid great applause--which most of the company had honestly deserved, even Victorine, whose Madonna eyes were obliged to make up for the deficiencies in her soul, while Daniel's acting, in its fervent sensual vehemence, if it did not depict the "German stripling," presented a very attractive young hothead--I attempted to again slip out unnoticed, but was detected by the manager's watchful eye, and, as tall Laban joined him, was helplessly carried off between them and dragged to the club-room. Protest as I might, Spielberg insisted upon treating me, and while doing so presented me to his acquaintances in the little town with great ceremony as a young dramatic student, whom he hoped to secure for his own stage. Meantime, one bottle of doubtful red wine followed another, and while I took a very moderate share I marveled at the celerity with which the great actor emptied one gla.s.s after another at a single draught, without the slightest flush appearing on his face. During all this time his stories of various events in his theatrical career seemed inexhaustible, and his frank delight in his own genius sparkled so innocently in his eyes, that it was impossible to feel vexed with him or avoid listening with a certain interest to his marvelous anecdotes, as one would to the tales of the "Arabian Nights."

At last the regular guests had all dispersed, even Laban had departed, but the great actor still detained me and made a sign to the sleepy waiter, upon which he instantly set a bottle of champagne upon the table. "It's no-use, cousin," he said, in a sonorous ba.s.s voice, which, it is true, now sounded a little husky; "we have a solemn act to perform. I have vowed not to go to bed until I have drunk to a pledge of fraternity with you in foaming sack. Come and pledge me! You are a fine fellow, only you haven't yet found it out yourself. When you have been in my company a few weeks, you will strip off the chrysalis and wonder at yourself as your wings bear you from flower to flower. Even if you often fly too near a light and scorch yourself a little, that is better than your pastoral tepidity. Your health, my heart's brother!

Let us drink eternal friends.h.i.+p!"

Spite of my intense reluctance, I could not avoid his cordial embrace.

Then he grew quieter, and, with apparent business-like gravity, began to discuss the capacity in which I was to enter his company. He spoke of new pieces its members were to study, the revision of older ones, for which he himself lacked time, and finally of his plan for including light operas in his repertory, for which he could not dispense with a conductor.

I listened without protesting, save by interjections and shrugs of the shoulders. Meantime, he emptied the bottle almost alone and called for a second, but I rose and resolutely declared I was going home.

"A plague on all cowardly poltroons!" he cried, staggering to his feet.

"Virtue exists no more!" Then followed a torrent of cla.s.sical quotations in a voice that made the windows rattle. Yet his gait was so unsteady that I hastily sprang forward to support him. When we were in the dark street, he pa.s.sed his arm around my shoulders and tottered along the road like a blind man. "Say nothing to her about it, brother," he stammered, "nothing about the champagne. She hates champagne, though in other respects she's a good wife; it's pure jealousy, ha! ha! She thinks my heart belongs to the Widow Clicquot--a worthy dame, in truth, who never reads me a curtain-lecture, but her purse must be filled with gold if we want to win her favor, ha!

ha!--and the father of a family, you know. Never get married, brother!

'Long hair, short wits,'" and he began to sing the champagne aria in the midst of the death-like silence of the Goose-Market.

When, with some difficulty, I at last succeeded in getting him up the stairs to his lodgings, he became as still as a mouse, and trembled from head to foot. "Don't tell her!" were the last words he whispered.

Then, forcing himself to stand erect, he gently opened the door.

"Good-evening, my angel," he stammered, and was going up to her to embrace her. She silently rose and looked at him with a sorrowful gaze, which suddenly seemed to sober him. "Well, well," he said, "it's hardly one o'clock--we don't act to-morrow--I've done a good business, too, haven't I, cousin? He'll stay with us, sweetheart; I've engaged him as dramatist and conductor, at a monthly salary of twelve thalers for the present--that will please you, I think. But now good-night, cousin! I'm perfectly sober, only I couldn't tell the town how one becomes President. So I'm going to take a long sleep, for the torture of the day was great."

Amid all the confusion of his brain, he still retained sufficient chivalrous courtesy to take his wife's hand and kiss it. Then he staggered through the side door into the sleeping-room, and we could hear him fall on the bed without undressing.

I cast a hasty glance at his wife, who stood gazing into vacancy.

"Good-night, Frau Luise," I said. "You will see me again to-morrow."

"To-morrow?"

"Certainly. To-morrow, and every day until you yourself send me away.

Perhaps I may yet make myself useful here--though not as conductor."

After that night I no longer led my own life.

My existence seemed only valuable when I made myself a slave, soul and body, in Frau Luise's service, coming to her aid wherever her own grand and lofty strength failed.

In reality I was making no sacrifice by this self-abnegation. For, as I have already confessed, my own aims and purposes had vanished, as a light on which a nocturnal traveler depends suddenly proves a will-o'-the-wisp, and flickers into a marsh mist. I felt averse rather than inclined to enter a pulpit, and I had not sufficient love or talent for any art or science to induce me to devote my life to it.

Clearly, as though written on the wall by some spectral hand, the sentence stood before me: "You are a mediocre man from whom the world has nothing to hope in the way of happiness or enlightenment. Rejoice if some good human being can warm his hands by your little flame."

I also perceived the correctness of my opinion by the fact that this discovery, instead of wounding me, created a sense of peace I had hitherto lacked. Rarely have I awaked in a mood so joyous, feeling as it were new-born, as on the morning after I had placed myself at the service of this n.o.ble woman. And the difficulties in regard to my former occupation which still embarra.s.sed me were to be dispelled in the simplest way.

With my breakfast a letter was brought in, which had been forwarded from the estate I had left, as I had said I should remain in this place for several days. A former fellow-student, a very admirable and intelligent man, wrote that some weakness of the throat compelled him to give up his profession as a preacher. Until he could determine how to shape his future life, he desired to seek a position as tutor in a family, and begged me to aid him as far as possible. I instantly wrote to my employer, informing him that I could not return to his house for reasons which at present I could disclose to no one, but which he would certainly approve if I could ever confide the whole truth to him. At the same time I proposed in my place the college friend, for whose character and education I could amply vouch.

I took leave of him and his whole family, who had become so dear to me, and requested him to send my property to me except the books, which I would leave for the present in my successor's care. Then I wrote a few cordial lines to my friend the pastor. As I added the farewell message to his dear daughters, the sorrowful face of the eldest again appeared before me in the most vivid hues, and her earnest eyes seemed to say: "You do not know what happiness you are losing."

But I was proof against any temptation to return.

Early that very morning I hurried to Herr Spielberg's rooms. He received me in a Turkish dressing-gown, with his brightest face, and, when I inquired how he had slept, answered, laughing: "You probably expected to find me a quiet fellow, cousin. But you must know that champagne and I are on the best of terms. When we do fall out, however, champagne always gets the worst of it; or to quote Julius Caesar:

'We were two lions litter'd in one day, And I the elder and more terrible.'

"But, good-morning. I hope you haven't slept off overnight what we arranged yesterday. How much salary did I promise you? I don't remember. But I won't play the rogue to you at any rate."

I told him that I would remain only on two conditions: first, that I should have entire liberty to do nothing except what I felt competent to accomplish; and secondly, that there should never be any question of wages. I had saved enough, during my three years as a tutor, to live without earning anything for a time.

He made no reply, only shook his ambrosial locks thoughtfully and struck my shoulder with his hand, like a prince accepting the homage and service of a va.s.sal. Then he called his wife, who was in the adjoining room, dressing the boy.

She entered with her usual calm expression and, avoiding my eyes, held out her hand. The boy ran to me and threw his arms around my neck.

"What do you say, dear," cried the artist, "he has really determined to stay. Of course, it is solely on your account, for he would not throw up his profession for my sake. Well, I hope you will treat him kindly.

'This lad--no angel is from sin more free, Craving thy favor, I commend to thee.'"

With these words he rose, smiling, leaving me to decide whether the quotation referred to my character of Fridolin, or to Joachimchen, who expressed great delight on hearing that Uncle Johannes would take him to walk immediately.