L'Arrabiata and Other Tales Part 16

A shade pa.s.sed over her face. "Good boys don't ask questions;" she said, shortly. "You be one; and fetch down our history from the bookshelf, and let us read a chapter of it before we go to bed."

"Not to-night, little mother, please not!" he implored. "Indeed it would be no use; it would be more waste time than ever, to drum any more of those weary old stories into my hard head to-night. Tell me one rather, as you used to do when I was a boy. I used to sit there, on that very footstool at your feet. You could tell beautiful stories.

About the emperor Octavian, and the sons of Haymon, come now;" and before she could prevent him, he had crouched down at her feet "Here I am, and so now begin, little mother; I am sure a true love-story would do me far more good than all those b.l.o.o.d.y battles, and cruel murders you seem to think so necessary to my education."

He threw back his head with its shock of curls, and looked up with a face it was not so easy to resist.

"You are a naughty curious boy," she said; and you turn upon me now, to punish me for having spoiled you. You think I can deny you nothing; but that is your mistake. Get up, sir, will you?--and go to bed, and sleep away the presumptuous thought, that your little mother, who after G.o.d, should be your first authority on earth, ever was, or ever could have been, any such green gosling as you may have seen to-night. Well, do you mean to go?"--He did not stir.

"What's the use of making a fuss?" he said playfully. "You know you always end by doing what I want, naturally; because I never want anything but what is reasonable. And now I want to hear this love-story of yours--and I _ought_ to hear it, that I may not look like a fool when other people talk of it, and wonder why you never married--though--"

"Though?"

"Well, though you were so handsome,--they say."

"_Who_ says--?"

"Peter Lars for one; besides, I have only to open my eyes and see."

"You don't say so?"

"That is, to be candid, I never opened them till yesterday, when Peter Lars was talking of it, and said he would give a great deal to have seen you as you were when you first came, ten years ago. And then it only just occurred to me that I had been struck with you at the time.

Since then, I never thought about it. I hardly knew whether you were plain or pretty. You were my own little mother, and that was all I cared for. But I see that Peter Lars, though I can't abide him, spoke truth when he said--"

"When he said, I had once been handsome?--thank you!"

Walter reddened. "Nay, you must not take it that way; for I think, on the contrary, yours is a face that could not alter much in half a lifetime."

"Possibly," she answered quietly: "By rights, a face that has never been young, should never grow old, unless the hair turns grey." A silence followed, while the little flame under the tea-kettle suddenly went out, and hushed that too. At last the girl resumed. "Yet I wrong myself; I was as young once as the youngest--happiest--most careless.

If I changed so soon it was not my fault."

"Whose then?" he said, very softly, holding his breath to listen; and as his head rested on her knee, he felt how she s.h.i.+vered through all her limbs at the recollection.

"Whose fault was it?" he whispered, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling--on a spot where a tiny ring of light was flickering above the cylinder of the little lamp.

"It is not a long story," she said reluctantly; "but a story that is neither new nor pretty: and so why should I tell it you? If you had been a daughter, instead of being a son, I should not have let you grow up to be nineteen, without having told it. It might not have done much good, what stories ever did? But at least, I should have done my duty by her, as a mother. But you that are a man, what good could I have done, by telling you that man is a rapacious and a selfish animal. If your own conscience has not taught you that, sooner or later it will."

"Rapacious? You know me better, little mother!"

"Right dear boy;" she said, much moved. "And if I had not expected you to be different from other men, should I have taken the trouble, all these eleven years to help you out of your childhood? No, dear, in that sense you will never be a man: could you have even believed it possible that a man could break his plighted troth to a helpless maiden, simply because she told him that she had nothing to bring him, but her face and her fair fame, and her sweet seventeen?"

Walter started from his seat, and took a few hasty turns about the room; then dropping down again on the stool at her feet. "Tell me all;"

he said.

"What is there to tell?" she answered sadly. "What signifies name and date and place? I have taught myself to forget it, but it has made me old before my time--I could not forget that if I would, for my gla.s.s tells me that every morning."

"Your gla.s.s tells fibs then," said Walter, interrupting her. "I have watched you narrowly; when you are by yourself, or with a person you dislike, you can look so grave and stem as to frighten people. But with me, when you are cheerful, and especially when you laugh, I often think there is not a girl I know, so young or so handsome as my own mamma."

She tapped him lightly on the mouth. "This is not the dancing-lesson, where compliments are practised with the steps. But I know you mean it kindly, dear; you want to comfort me for the mortifications of the past. But you need not, my son; I have comforted myself for this lost luck, and can even thank G.o.d that I did lose it. And was it not strange? A month or two after the thing had been broken off, and he had turned to a richer woman, Fortune was so mischievous as to send us a legacy which n.o.body had ever thought of; my elder sister and myself were now good matches, and my poor Rose who always had been plain, and long given up all hopes of a husband, was found to be a very charming creature, seen by the glitter of this unexpected gilding. Even an artist was among her suitors, and he considered himself a very fortunate man when she gave him the preference. I too did not want for choice, but it gave me no trouble, either of head or heart. Only when that man I had really loved came back to me, and had the impudence to talk of an error of the heart, then, indeed, the bitterness rose to my lips, and the disgust has remained. Especially when I hear people talking of man's virtues. They have taken good care, since then, to prevent my opinion changing; my poor sister--"

She stopped, and her eyebrows met with a sinister expression.

"Had she so hard a life of it?" asked Walter, timidly: "after I saw her she never left her bed, and then our Meister seemed kind enough; she always looked so sad, I used to pity her, though she never gave me a good word. After you came, you know, I was even forbidden to go near her: I often tried to think what made her so unkind. Of course I must have been a burthen to her at first, when the Meister brought me home, as a poor orphan boy, and she may have found it hard to have to appear fond of me, because she had no children of her own. But I did all I could to make myself of use, and certainly I did the work of any two of our usual apprentices. Why did she always turn away her head when she saw me, as nervous people do, when they see a poor blind worm, or a mouse?--do you know why, little mother?"

"Forget it, dear," she said. "Poor Rose was an unhappy woman; she took no pleasure in anything. _She_ really never was young at any time; not even as a little girl--I never saw her really merry, while I used to be full of mirth and mischief. In our own home, where we lived before our dear mother died, it was quite different to this ridiculous little puffed-up place, which is neither town nor country, and where people are always standing upon their dignity, even though they were to perish with it in their own dullness. When I hear of your stupid dancing-lessons, and of the amus.e.m.e.nts you have here, that can as little enliven the dreary winter, as the couple of wretched little oil-lamps can the dull streets--then I really do feel as if I were--not nine-and-twenty--but nine-and-ninety; and as if I had lived so long--so long as to remember the days, when the children of men were innocent and dwelt in Paradise."

"Did you ever care for dancing?"

"I danced all day, like the mermaids. Wherever I went and stood, I had the three-quarter time in my toes, and the prettiest of the quadrille tunes; and so I danced at my spinning-wheel, and while I was watching the kitchen-fire, or plaiting up my poor mother's hair, who could not easily lift her arms. Nay, even in church, I have caught myself singing the Psalms, and beating valse time with my foot--and terribly ashamed I was, afterwards, when I thought what a sin it was. It was a disease I had; but I was soon cured. Ever after I found out that I had given away my heart to a heartless man, my feet seemed shod with lead. I never entered a ballroom again; and though in church my thoughts were often far away, they were not in a merrier place, but in a quieter--darker--farther above, or below the earth."

A silence followed, and they heard the watchman pa.s.s again, and the clock strike twelve.

"This is the hour for the ghosts to dance," said Walter with a laugh, and a sort of superst.i.tions shudder. "What do you say to taking a turn, little mother? I don't know why, but I do feel a most inordinate desire to see you dance. The Meister is still at the Star. On a Sat.u.r.day, you know, he never comes home till one o'clock. We have the house to ourselves, and may do what we please, without anybody's being the wiser--unless indeed, that ricketty old cupboard should chance to fall upon us, and crush us, and send us dancing into all eternity. Hey!

mamma, what do you say?"

He had jumped up, stroked back his hair, and stood before her, with a make-believe of b.u.t.toning his gloves, and settling his necktie.

"Foolish fellow!" she said. "What has come to him to-night? He sings, he falls in love, and now in the dead of night, he comes and calls upon his own old mother to stand up and dance with him! Is this what comes of spoiling sons, and letting them grow over their mother's heads?"

"Suffer me to say you are mistaken, honoured madam," he began, with mock devotion. "It is, on the contrary, your duty, as guardian of my unguarded youth--your serious duty--to convince yourself that I really do grow in grace, and make progress in those ornamental branches of education, which are indeed most foreign to my nature. At the close of my course of dancing-lessons, it might be considered proper to hold some species of examination."

She raised her eyes to his, with a look so grave, as to tone down his mischievous mood at once.

"It is time to have done with nonsense," she said; and her voice sounded almost sharp. "I would say goodnight, and leave you to yourself this moment, only I see that you are not nearly ready for sleep, nor will be, for ever so long--go, fetch the book. Even if you should not learn much to-night--which indeed does not seem likely--it may help us to get this nonsense out of your head, and that is always something gained."

He sighed as he walked towards the narrow bookshelf upon the cupboard.

"Well, I suppose I must obey--for a change," he said, with a shake of his head. "Only if I should never know anything more of Barbarossa, than that his beard was red, it will be n.o.body's fault but yours."

"Well, and I suppose--for a change--I must temper my justice with mercy," she said, returning to a jesting tone. "Leave that history, and come and sit down here at my feet, and let me talk to you of G.o.ds and heroes; and if you are a good boy, and pay attention, I will shew you the pictures afterwards, as a reward."

She took up the little blue volume she had been looking through before.

"I only found this yesterday," she said, "in the lumber-room upstairs; the t.i.tle is 'Gotterlehre,' and it was edited in the last century by a man called Moritz. There are some good verses of Goethe's in it; I know you will like them."

He resumed his place at her feet, and she began. She had a clear voice, and used it simply; only when her feelings became excited it would sink to a moving melodious contralto. After she had read the first few pages, and waxing warmer, began to recite the pa.s.sage: "To which of these immortals, the highest prize?" &c., &c.--the words almost turned to song. She read the poem slowly to the end, and gently closing the book--"How do you like it?" she whispered.

He did not answer. The eyes that had been dreamily fixed on the blue ring of flickering light upon the ceiling, had been dropping gradually, till at last they closed. His head was resting on her knee; he breathed softly, and smiled in his sleep. "Is he thinking of his last valse?"

she said to herself, looking thoughtfully down on his cloudless brow, and at the full red lips, above which a line of soft yellow down had begun to shew itself. The lines of that blooming face were certainly far from regular; but even in sleep, there was an intellectual charm about it--a spiritualized sense of humour--that enn.o.bled its expression. Those lips had certainly never parted to laugh at or to utter a scurrile jest.

Thus she sat gazing on the placid face of the sleeper; till wearied by the thoughts that came sweeping through her brain in the stillness of the night, she leaned back in her chair, her eyelids drooped, and she too, fell into a slight dreamy kind of sleep.

An hour elapsed. The wind blew the cas.e.m.e.nt open, with a gust of damp night-air that extinguished the little lamp that had almost consumed its oil.

A heavy dragging step was heard upon the stairs. She heard it even through her dream, though the darkness prevented her waking quite. The door opened, and a lantern threw its full ray of vivid light full upon her face. She started up in alarm: "Is that you, Meister?" she said, hastily pa.s.sing her hand across her eyes.

A strange figure was standing on the threshold--a tall man between fifty and sixty, in a long loose coat trimmed with fur, b.u.t.toned over a faded red velvet waistcoat. He wore a cap or barret, placed so far forward upon his grizzling curls, as also to cover the half of his flushed forehead. One foot was shod with a coa.r.s.e stout boot, and the other, wrapt out of all shape, with a large felt slipper.

For all his uneven gait, and his uncouth appearance, there was that about him which was well calculated to quell any inclination to laugh; and the look from those sinister dark eyes, directed towards the group formed by the two young people, was enough to make even this fearless girl quail.

"What does all this mean?" he said, as he came forward and placed his lantern upon the table. "What are you two doing here at this hour? Is the boy asleep, or have you been acting a play?"