The Breaking of the Storm Volume I Part 17

Uncle Ernst at this point did indeed shake his head, though not at all angrily, but with a somewhat grim enjoyment, such as Reinhold had not seen him express during the whole evening. "Can he be as susceptible to flattery as other tyrants?" thought Reinhold.

"And what is the new commission?" he asked.

"A most n.o.ble commission," answered Justus, swallowing his third cup of tea. "This time they really have got money--no end of money; that is to say, of course there will not be any over for me; it will all be spent in the actual cost of materials, unless your uncle will provide the marble, which, considering how he hates the whole business, there is very little chance of; but, at all events, the matter can be properly set going. I have been thinking it over on my way here from the committee, where it has all been pretty nearly settled."

"Well, tell us about it," said Uncle Ernst.

He had thrown himself back in his chair, and was puffing great clouds of smoke up to the ceiling from a cigar which he had just lighted.

Reinhold had wished to abstain from smoking, out of respect to the ladies, but his uncle would not allow it, and said his womankind were accustomed to it. Justus, who did not smoke, was rolling little pellets of bread into a ball; he was evidently already at work.

"It is the old story, to begin with," said he; "three or four steps--we will say three--of sandstone, supporting a quadrangular pedestal of granite, upon which is a square box, upon which box finally stands Germany--Germany this time without any cla.s.sic folds. The box is for the inscription--there are a lot of brave Fritzes and Johanns to be mentioned--laurel wreaths, badges, etc.; that is all easy enough. But the bas-reliefs on the pedestal--there is the difficulty. Siemering has done everything in that line that is to be done so well, and, besides, has so much more s.p.a.ce than I have, that every one will say: 'Siemering, of course--this is all copied from him.' But it is no use thinking of that; if one has got to make a horse, he must have four legs; and if one has got to portray a campaign, there must be the march out at one end, and the return home at the other, and a fight in the middle, and patriotic ambulances; and not a line of that can be omitted. If you can't be original in your conception of the whole, you must be in detail; and as my originality entirely depends upon the merits of my models, this time I shall be wonderfully original, because my models will be wonderfully good. Departure of one of the Landwehr--for the whole thing must be popular--one of the Landwehr--Captain Schmidt."

"I?" exclaimed Reinhold, astonished.

"You and none other; I made up my mind to that an hour ago. Heaven has sent you to me, and the fact of your having been promoted from the ranks during the campaign will be very useful to me; you will know why presently. To continue. Aged father straining his son to his heart at the moment of departure." Justus lowered his voice, and glanced at the servant who had waited upon them and now left the room. "Of course old Grollman, with his queer old face, with its hundreds of wonderful wrinkles, will always be my model for the aged fathers. More of the Landwehr in the background, three or four of our workmen--fine handsome heads. Number two: Office of the District Relief Committee. Women bringing offsprings; Aunt Rikchen, as a member of the committee, examining, with a critical glance, the heaped-up offerings--that will be perfect! In one corner Cilli making lint--superb!"

"That is a very fine idea," said Uncle Ernst.

"Who is Cilli?" asked Reinhold.

"An angel," answered Justus, applying himself still more eagerly to his occupation of shaping his bread pedestal. "She is the blind daughter of good old Kreisel, your uncle's head clerk, who of course officiates as superintendent, bending over his desk and making a list of the offerings. He alone will make my work immortal. Thirdly: Battle Scene.

A mounted officer waving his sword; the Landwehr, with fixed bayonets, rus.h.i.+ng to the attack; 'Forwards! march! hurrah!' commanded by our Captain here, already promoted to be a non-commissioned officer--you see now?--and so on. Fourthly: the Return Home. The loveliest girl in the town presenting laurel wreaths--of course Fraulein Ferdinanda, now the daughter of the burgomaster; the burgomaster, a stately personage, Herr Ernst Schmidt."

"I beg you will leave me out of the question!" said Uncle Ernst.

"I beg you will not interrupt me," cried Justus. "Where in the whole world should I find so perfect a representative of the good old genuine German burgher?"

"The old genuine German burgher was a Republican," grumbled Uncle Ernst.

"So much the better," cried the sculptor. "A monument of victory is also a monument of peace. What would victory have done for us if it had not brought us peace? Peace without and peace within, irrespective of party feeling! The stronger the party feeling expressed on the faces of my figures, so much the more apparent will be the deep patriotic symbolicism that my work will show forth. So my burgomaster must let people see his Republican principles and hatred of the n.o.bility a hundred yards off, as my general must be a concentration of feudalism and aristocraticism. And there, again, I have got quite as cla.s.sic a model in its way--General von Werben."

Reinhold looked up startled; the name came so unexpectedly, and Ferdinanda had said to him before, "My father hates the Werbens!"

And, indeed, Uncle Ernst's face had suddenly become black as night, and the ladies were in evident fear that the storm might burst upon them at any moment. Ferdinanda's beautiful features were suddenly covered with a rosy flush, and as suddenly turned deadly pale. Aunt Rikchen glanced at the sculptor with a quick, anxious look, and furtively shook her head as if in warning; but he did not seem to observe anything of all this.

"It will be the culminating point of the whole thing," cried he. "On the proud warrior's face shall be a look of satisfaction, mingled with the suppression of bitter party feeling, as though he were saying, 'Dissension between us is at an end for ever;' and my general leans down from his horse and stretches out his hand to the burgomaster, who grasps it with manly emotion, which says, as plainly as any words, 'Amen!'"

"Never!" exclaimed Uncle Ernst in a voice of thunder. "Before I grasp his hand, let my right hand wither! And whoever offers me such an insult, even in effigy, between that man and me there shall be war to the knife." And he drew the knife, which he had seized, across the table, threw it aside, pushed his chair back, and staggered to his feet.

But it was only an explosion of Berserker wrath; for, as Reinhold sprang up to support him, he completely recovered his steady bearing, and said, in a voice whose forced calm contrasted strangely and painfully with the previous wild outbreak:

"We have sat too long after dinner; it stops the circulation, and then all the blood goes to the head. Good-night, Reinhold; I shall see you again to-morrow morning. Good-night all of you."

He was gone.

"What, in Heaven's name, is the meaning of that?" asked Justus.

He still sat there, the rough bread model of his monument in his hand, with wide-open staring eyes, like a child who sees a black devil jump out of a harmless-looking box. "What in the world is the matter?"

"What possessed you to mention that unlucky name?" said Aunt Rikchen.

"Goodness me! that was the only thing wanting, and now you have done it!"

Ferdinanda, with a half-sigh, tried to rise from her chair; but, pressing her hand to her heart, fell back again immediately, deadly white, her beautiful head sinking against the cus.h.i.+on.

"What is the matter with you?" cried Aunt Rikchen. "Water--quick!--and ring the bell!"

Reinhold filled a tumbler from the water-jug, Justus flew to the bell; a maid-servant hurried in soon, followed by a second, and all the women busied themselves over the fainting girl.

"I think we are in the way here," said Reinhold, and led Justus, who was still overpowered with astonishment, into the hall.

"Now can you explain this to me?" exclaimed Justus.

"I had hoped to get some explanation from you," answered Reinhold. "I only know that my uncle hates the General, has done so since '48, so I suppose something must have happened between them then."

"By-the-way, yes. Now I recollect," cried Justus; "Aunt Rikchen did once tell me about it, but I had quite forgotten it; and even if I had not, how could I know that the old madman would get into such a state about it? Shall I come up with you?"

"Thanks, I can find my way. And you?"

"I live at the back here over my studio. You must come and pay me a visit to-morrow, and we will talk further over this wonderful business.

Do you stay long?"

"I had meant to, but after this scene----"

"Oh, you must not think too much about that; I know him well. To-morrow there will not be a trace of it. He is a capital old fellow through it all. Felicissima notte! a rivederci!"

Reinhold easily found his way to his room through the well-lighted stairs and pa.s.sages. The candles stood on the table, but he did not light them, the crescent moon gave light enough, and a warm breeze came in at the open window, by which he stood in deep thought.

"What a pity," he murmured; "I should have liked to cast anchor here for some time, and might have got on with the old gentleman. He seemed to me rather queer, and sometimes lets go the rudder, but it is not a very uncommon thing, and perhaps it will all pa.s.s over by to-morrow. I could soon learn his ways. He drank at least three bottles, and his eyes were bloodshot and wild before he flew out in that way. I am afraid it is rather a family failing; our old sailor grandfather--but it is not the worst of faults, and we Schmidts cannot be expected to have the aristocratic manners of the Werbens. Ferdinanda is unquestionably very handsome; the sculptor was right: 'the prettiest girl in the town!' And yet, the n.o.ble carriage, the inexpressible grace of movement, the beautiful look of the eyes, the ever-changing and always sweet expression of the features--she cannot be compared with Elsa, and indeed who could? Then she has not spoken three words. Is there nothing behind that beautiful forehead? Is that gloomy silence only a cloak whose 'cla.s.sic folds' she has borrowed perhaps of her master to conceal her insignificance? I had pictured to myself something quite different when first I saw her. There was some life about her when she cut short that introduction at the railway station, and hurried me away. Certainly since then I have discovered why it was painful for her. Capulets and Montagues, only divided by a garden wall.

What was that?"

The moon had risen higher; the shrubbery walk at the bottom of the garden, down which Reinhold could see some distance from the window where he stood, was in parts quite light between the bushes. Across one of the light spots a female form had just glided, only to disappear, and did not pa.s.s into the light again. But she must do so if she belonged to the house; the path went round a gra.s.s-plot in its immediate vicinity, and lay in the full light of the moon, and by leaning out a very little he could easily see over it. But why should she belong to the house? On one side of the garden was a small outhouse in which there was a lighted window. The figure might have come from thence. "And at any rate," thought Reinhold, "it is no business of yours, and you can go to bed."

He was just about to shut the window when he observed the figure again, this time in the path which ran along the wall, or wooden paling (he could not distinguish which), that on the left hand separated the garden for a little way from the neighbouring one. The wall, or paling, was overshadowed by high trees on that side. The moon shone on the right hand, but the distance was too great to distinguish with certainty more than the outline of the dark figure, as it slowly walked up and down the path, and finally stood still close to the wall, so that Reinhold could no longer see the shadow which before had been perceptible on the light background. It seemed, however, as if she leaned her head against the wall for a long time, staying in this att.i.tude for at least two or three minutes, then she stooped and took up something, which for a moment s.h.i.+mmered white in the moonlight, and which she pressed to, or perhaps concealed, in her bosom. And then she came away from the wall and farther into the garden, slowly walking up and down between the bushes as she had done before on the path, but each time coming nearer till she reached the gra.s.splot. Then she stood still, and seemed to take a sweeping glance over the house; then she came over the gra.s.s-plot. It was Ferdinanda!

Involuntarily he withdrew from the window. "Why of course! Why should it not be Ferdinanda trying to calm her shaken nerves by taking a walk in the cool night air? Her slow gait, her repeated halting--of course the leaning against the wall was a return of the fainting! He ought to have run to her a.s.sistance and picked up her handkerchief which she had let drop, instead of stopping here playing the spy! It was too bad!"

He shut his window quietly, without venturing to light any candles in the present uneasy state of his conscience, but helped himself as well as he could by the light of the moon, which certainly was bright enough, so bright indeed that long after he was in bed he lay and watched the silver rays, through an opening in the curtains, s.h.i.+ning further and further in upon the wall, till at last the usual deep and profound sleep closed his eyelids.

CHAPTER V.

The next morning was lovely. The bright sun shone into his room from a blue and cloudless sky as Reinhold pushed the curtains aside and opened the window. Beneath him the dewdrops glistened upon the blades of gra.s.s in the round plat; in the bushes and amongst the branches of the tall trees, through which a soft breeze was playing, the golden light shone and twittering birds were flitting about. Reinhold cast a shy glance towards the left, upon the division between the two gardens, which he now perceived to be a high paling. If that garden were the same of which young Werben spoke yesterday, then those overhanging trees hid a secret amidst their green shadows, a secret which his rapidly-beating heart again whispered to him eagerly, pa.s.sionately, as though there were nothing else in the world worth the trouble of beating for.

A knock at the door sounded. Reinhold hastily put on his coat. It was not his uncle, only Justus Anders' favourite model for aged fathers, the grey-haired, grey-bearded servant with the wonderfully expressive wrinkles in the withered face.

His master had inquired several times for the Captain; just now again when he came in for his second breakfast (he drank his coffee always at five o'clock, sometimes earlier), and he got quite angry at the Captain not having made his appearance. Fraulein Ferdinanda had been working in her studio since nine o'clock; but Fraulein Rikchen was downstairs in the dining-room waiting to make the Captain's coffee.