Gertrude's Marriage Part 5

Involuntarily he walked faster. He would accept the kind invitation to the ball. But when he reached the hotel he had changed his mind again.

He did not care to see her as a modern society woman, he would not efface that lovely picture he had seen through the window of that poor little house. He could not have borne it if she had met him in the brilliant ball-room, with that air of condescension with which he had heard her reproached to-day. He decided to dine at home.

With this thought he had walked down the street again till he reached the flower-shop. On a sudden impulse he entered and asked for a simple bouquet.

The woman had an immense bouquet in her hand at the moment, resembling a cart-wheel surrounded by rich lace, which she was just giving to the errand-boy.

"For Miss Baumhagen," she said, "here is the card."

Frank Linden saw a coat-of-arms over the name. He stepped back a moment, undecided what to do. Then the shopwoman turned towards him.

"A simple bouquet," he repeated. There was none ready, but they could make up one immediately. The young man himself chose the flowers from the wet sand and gave them to her. It must have been a pleasant occupation for he was constantly putting back a rose and subst.i.tuting a finer one for it. At last it was finished, a graceful bouquet of white roses just tinted with pink, like a maiden's blush, interspersed with maiden-hair and delicate ferns. He looked at the dainty blossoms once more, then paid for it and went back to the hotel. Then he laid the bouquet on the table, called for ink and paper, took a visiting-card and wrote. Suddenly he stopped and smiled, "What nonsense!" he said, half aloud, "she is sure to carry the big bouquet." Then he began again and read it over. It was a little verse asking if the G.o.dfather might at this late hour send to the G.o.dmother the flowers which according to ancient custom he ought to have offered at the christening, and modestly hoping she would honor them by carrying them to the ball that night. He smiled again, put it into the envelope and gave the bouquet and letter to a messenger with instructions to carry both to Miss Baumhagen. And then a thought struck him--the ball began at eight o'clock--that would be in ten minutes--he would see Gertrude Baumhagen, see--if his bouquet--nonsense! Very likely! But then he would wait. "It is well the judge does not see me now!" he whispered to himself. He felt like a child at Christmas time, so happy was he and so full of expectation as he wandered up and down the square in front of the hotel.

CHAPTER IV.

The clock struck eight. Gentlemen on foot had already been coming to the hotel for some time, then ladies arrived, and at length the first carriage containing guests for the ball rolled up, dainty feet tripped up the steps, and rich silks rustled as they walked. Carriage followed carriage; now came an elegant equipage with magnificent gray horses, a charming slight woman's figure in a light blue dress covered with delicate lace, bent forward, and a silvery laugh sounded in Linden's ear. "It is Mrs. Fredericks," he heard the people murmur behind him.

So that was her sister!

The beautiful young wife swept up the steps like a lovely fairy, followed by her husband in a faultless black dress-coat, carrying her fan and bouquet.

The carriage dashed across the marketplace again, to return in less than five minutes.

"Gertrude!" whispered Linden, drawing involuntarily further back into the shadow. A short stout lady in a light gray dress descended from the carriage, then she glided out and stood beside her mother, slender and graceful in her s.h.i.+mmering white silk, her beautiful shoulders lightly covered, and in her hand a well-known bouquet of pale roses. But this was not the girl of a few hours back. The small head was bent back as if the ma.s.sive light brown braids were too heavy for it, and an expression of proud reserve which he had not before perceived, rested on the open countenance.

Two gentlemen started forward to greet the ladies; the first gallantly offered his arm to the mother, the other approached the young girl. She thanked him proudly, scarcely touching his arm with her finger-tips.

Then suddenly this figure from which he could not take his eyes, vanished like a beautiful vision.

The encounter had left him in a mood of intense excitement. He bestowed a dollar on a poor woman who stood beside him with a miserable child in her arms, and he ordered out so big a gla.s.s of hot wine for old Summerfeld, his coachman, that the old man was alarmed and hoped "they should get home all right."

"What folly it is," said Linden to himself. And when a moment later his carriage drove up, and at the same moment the notes of a Strauss waltz struck his ear, he began to hum the air of "The Rose of the South."

Then the carriage rattled over the market-place out on the dark country road, and sooner than usual he was at home in his quiet little room, taking a thousand pleasant thoughts with him.

In the manor-house at Niendorf there was one room in which roses bloomed in ma.s.ses; not only in the boxes between the double windows or in the pots on the sill according to the season, but in the room itself, thousands of earth's fairest flowers were wreathed about the pictures and furniture. It had a strange effect, especially when instead of the sleeping beauty one might have expected to find here, one perceived a very old woman in an arm chair by the window, unweariedly engaged in cutting leaves and petals out of colored silk paper, shaping and putting them together so that at length a rose trembled on its wire stem, looking as natural from a little distance as if it had just been cut from the bush. Aunt Rosalie could not live without making roses; she lavished half her modest income on silk paper, and every one whom she wished well, received a wreath of roses as a present, red, pink, white and yellow blossoms tastefully intermixed. All the village beauties wore roses of Aunt Rosalie's manufacture in their well-oiled hair at the village dances. The graves in the church-yard displayed ma.s.ses of white and crimson roses from the same store, torn and faded by wind and sun. The little church was lavishly decked every year by Aunt Rosalie, with these witnesses to her skill.

She was known therefore throughout the village to young and old as "Aunt Rose" or "Miss Rose," and not seldom was she followed in her walks by a crowd of children, especially little girls, with the pet.i.tion "a rose for me too!" And "Aunt Rose" was always prepared for them; the less successful specimens were kept entirely for this purpose and were distributed from her capacious reticule with a lavish hand.

Frank Linden had long been accustomed to spend an occasional hour in the old lady's society. At the sight of her something of the atmosphere of peace which surrounded her seemed to descend upon him and calmed and soothed him. She would sit calm and still at her little table, her small withered hands busied in forming the "symbols of a well-rounded life." By degrees she had related to him in a quaintly solemn tone, stories of the lives which had pa.s.sed under the pointed gables of this roof. There was little light and much shade among them, much guilt, and error, a dark bit of life-history. A married pair who did not agree, an only child idolized by both, and this only son covered himself and his parents with disgrace and fled to America, where he died. The parents were left behind without hope or comfort in the world, each reproaching the other for the failure in their son's training. Then the wife died of grief, and now began an endless term of loneliness for the elderly man under a ban of misanthropy and scorn of his kind; loving no one but his dog, a.s.sociating with no one except with Wolff, who brought the news and gossip of the town, and treating even him with a disdain bordering on insult.

"But you see, my dear nephew," the old aunt had added, "there are men who are more like hounds than the hounds themselves,--dogs will cry out when they are trodden upon, but the sort to which he belongs will smile humbly at the hardest kick--and William found such a man necessary to him."

It was snowing; the mountains were all white, the garden lay shrouded under a s.h.i.+ning white coverlid, and white snow-flakes were dancing in the air. Frank Linden had come back from hunting with the steward, and after dinner he went into Aunt Rosalie's room. She rose as he entered and came towards him.

"There you see, my dear nephew, what happens when you go out for a day.

You have had a visit, such a splendid fas.h.i.+onable visitor in a magnificent sleigh. I was just taking my walk in the corridor as he came up the stairs and here is his card,"--she searched in her reticule--"which he left for you."

Frank took the card and read. "Arthur Fredericks." "Oh, I am sorry," he said, really regretting his loss. "When was he here?"

"Oh, just at noon precisely, when most Christians are eating their dinner," she replied. "And the postman has been here too and brought a letter for you. Oh, dear, where is it now? Where could I have put it?"

And she turned about and began to look for it, first on the table among the pieces of silk paper and then on the floor, a.s.sisted by the young man.

"What did the letter look like, dearest Aunt?"

"Blue--or gray--blue, I think," she replied, all out of breath, turning out the contents of her red silk reticule. She brought out a ma.s.s of rose-buds and an immense handkerchief edged with lace, but nothing else.

"Was the letter small or large?" he inquired from behind the sofa.

"Large and thick," gasped Aunt Rosalie. "Such a thing never happened to me before in my life--it is really dreadful." And with astounding agility she turned over the things on the consumptive little piano and tossed the antique sheets of music about.

"Perhaps it got into the stove, Auntie."

"No, no, it has not been unscrewed since this morning."

Frank Linden went to the bell and rung. "Don't take any more trouble about it, Auntie, the letter is sure to turn up; let the maid look for it."

Dorothy came and looked, and looked behind all the furniture, and shaking out all the curtains--but in vain.

"Well, we will give it up," declared Linden at length--"I suppose it is a letter from my mother or from the Judge--I can ask them what they had to say. Let us drink our coffee. Auntie."

"I shan't sleep the whole night," declared the little old lady in much excitement.

"O don't think any more about it," he begged her, good-humoredly. "I am sure there was nothing of any great importance in it. Tell me some of your old stories now, they will just suit this weather."

But the wrinkled face under the great cap still wore an anxious look, and the dim eyes kept straying away from the coffee cups searchingly round the room, lingering thoughtfully on the green lamp-shade.

Evidently there was no hope of a conversation with her. After awhile the young man rose to go to his own room.

"Yes, go, go," she said, relieved, "and then I can think where I could have put that letter. Oh, my memory! my memory! I am growing so old."

He walked along the corridor and mounted the staircase into the second story. The twilight of the short winter day had already darkened all the comers. It was painfully still in the house, only the echo of his own footsteps sounding in his ear. It was such a day as his friend had predicted for him--horribly lonely and empty, it seemed to rest like a heavy weight on this world-remote house. One cannot always read, cannot always be busy, especially when the thoughts stray uneasily out over forest and meadow to a distinct goal, and always return anxious and doubting.

He stood in his room at the window and watched the snow flakes fluttering down in the darkening air, and fell into a dream as he had done every day for the last week. He gave himself up to it so entirely that he fancied he could distinctly hear a light step behind him on the carpet, and the soft tones of a woman's voice, saying, "Frank, Frankie!" He turned and gazed into the dusky room. What if she were to open the door now,--what if she should come in with the child in her arms? Why should it not be, why could it not be? Were these walls not strong enough, these rooms not cosy and homelike enough to hold such happiness?

He began to walk up and down. Folly! Nonsense! What was he thinking of?

Oh, if he had never come here, or better still if she were only the daughter of the foreman like her grandmother, and sat on the bench before the little house under the lilac tree, then everything would be so simple. He would not for the world enter that mad race for Gertrude Baumhagen's money-bags, in which so many had already come to grief. But her sweet friends.h.i.+p?--

And then he fell helpless again before the charm of her eyes.

He was suffering from those doubts, from those alternating fears and hopes that torment every man who is in love. And Frank Linden in his loneliness had long since acknowledged to himself that he only wanted Gertrude Baumhagen to complete his happiness.

His was by no means a shy or retiring nature. On the contrary, he possessed that modest boldness which seems so natural to some people on whom society looks with favor. If he were owner of a large estate instead of this "hole"--as the Judge designated Niendorf--he would rather have asked to-day than to-morrow if she would be his wife, without too great a shyness of the money-bags. But as it was, he could not, he must make his way a little first, and before he could do that, who could tell what might have happened to Gertrude Baumhagen?

He bit his lip at the thought--the result was always the same. But was a true heart nothing then, and a strong will? If the Judge were only here so he could ask him--

During these thoughts he had lighted the lamp. There lay the card on the table, which Aunt Rosalie had given him. "Arthur Fredericks." He smiled as he thought of the little insignificant man to whom her sister had given her heart, and he could not think of Gertrude as belonging to him in any way. At last a return visit from him! And there were some half effaced words written with a pencil.