L'Arrabiata and Other Tales Part 18

She said nothing, she only gave an absent nod, and went--but not into the kitchen. Her heart beat violently as she flew upstairs, to take refuge in her own room. It was off the sitting-room, with two narrow windows, that looked out on the sunny street. As soon as she felt herself alone, she sat down upon her bed, for her knees were knocking under her, and she could scarcely stand. She sat staring at the motes dancing in the sunbeam, that fell aslant upon the floor. As rapid and impalpable as those whirling atoms, was the vortex in her brain. At last, her eyes ran over; and, in a gush of pa.s.sionate tears, she poured forth the pain and grief she had repressed so sternly and so scornfully, through all that hostile conference below.

About this time, Walter came in from a French lesson which, on Helen's advice, he was in the habit of taking after early church. He went straight to a large low room upon the ground-floor. The dining-table stood in the centre of it, and a few old presses and cupboards, ranged round the walls, contained the Meister's whole stock of decorative designs, and all his plans and patterns.--Here, it was evident, a feminine hand kept order. The boards of the dinner-table were polished white with scrubbing. The sand lay still immaculate upon the floor, and the large pots of ivy by the windows, shaded the purest, brightest panes.

The room looked to the court and garden, and was entirely sunless; so that Walter, who had taken out his drawing-board, and seated himself in the best light, undisturbed by a single ray, very soon became absorbed in his work.

There was an old villa outside the town, that had formerly belonged to a family of rank, and had now been purchased by the rich Burgermeister.

There, among other rooms that wanted painting, was a large saloon in the Rococo style, that had to be restored from the very foundation. And for many weeks past, the Meister had refused all other orders, that he might finish this master-piece within the appointed time.--Here, as every where, Walter had to help him vigorously. But while with bold pencil, he was grouping arabesques and wreaths of fruit and flowers, adapted from old engravings, to renovate the obliterated ceiling in its original style, he found it far more interesting to study the whole plan of the building, and then, taking note of its measures and proportion's, to work it out at leisure, after his own head, with its sections, height and bas.e.m.e.nts. He had only a sweet stolen hour or two, on holidays, to spend on these. The Meister snarled and scolded him, when he came in and caught him at such allotria--"Where's the good of them?" he growled. "There are many things more needful to our business--"

To-day, however, the old man was safe in his own room, tied by the leg, and could not possibly disturb him; so he worked on quietly and quickly, and hoped to have done by dinner-time.

All at once the door opened, and in slipped a small dark figure, with his hands in his trowser's pockets, and his close shorn raven head slightly inclined towards his left shoulder, which was visibly some inches higher than his right one. He kept the lower part of his face on the stretch of an everlasting grin--and while the thin lips always seemed prepared for a whistle or a jovial smack, the restless grey eyes had wicked gleams of malice, and cunning, and consuming desire.

"Good morning, young genius;" he said, coming round the table with noiseless step; "busy as a bee?--When you come to my time of life," (he was barely five-and-twenty), "you will have spent a good part of that speed, and will be glad enough to take your Sundays easily as I do, in having a good long sleep, and then in pleasantly getting rid of your wretched wages, that are certainly not worth the keeping. Even now, if you were not such a stiffnecked sort of virtue, I should say to you: 'Put that scrawl in the fire, and come with me. I could show you where you may taste a sound French wine, that is well worth its price."

"Much obliged to you," said Walter coldly, "your taste is not mine, Peter Lars; and I can't stand wine in the morning--"

"I know you can't," sneered Peter. "You are such a pattern of propriety!--And for as tall and as broad as you are, you let yourself be led about by a piece of womankind, like a c.o.c.kchafer tied to a thread. What we men think of that, you never care to know."

"Men!" echoed Walter, and with all the young fellow's kindheartedness, he could not repress the look of irony that stole over his features.

"I say, men;" repeated the little dark one, and stretched himself in all his limbs. "One need not be six foot high, to feel oneself a man by the side of women's darlings, and giant babies in swaddling clothes."

"Thank Heaven, then, Peter Lars, for having made a man of thee, and go thy ways rejoicing--What's the use of coming here to worry me? can't you leave me to myself in peace? Do I look after you?" Peter came close up to him, and peered in his face with a wicked smile.

"I do not mean to disturb you long," he said; "but I could not deny myself the pleasure of congratulating so dutiful a son, on the acquisition of a bran new step-papa. Ha! now I see our bright young genius can vouchsafe to look at me;" and, in fact, Walter was staring at him in speechless surprise.

"What are you talking of?"--he said impatiently.

"Of nothing, and of n.o.body less, than Mamsell Helene! who does not mean to content herself, with petting her great big boy for ever; and begins to feel a hankering after real legitimate babies of her own, and of more natural dimensions."

"Don't be stupid!"--and Walter laughed, half in anger, and half amused at the idea. It had never occurred to him before. "_She_ never means to marry! That is a fact I happen to know."

"None of your arrogant contradictions, I beg," retorted Peter; "one may be a very bright young genius, and yet see nothing of what is pa.s.sing in broad daylight--I have it upon the best authority. I know she is going to be married, and moreover I can tell you, to whom."

"Tell me then."

"What can that signify to you?--To you, one step-father must be just as inconvenient as another. Those happy days are over, when you made rain and suns.h.i.+ne, and used to be her darling, and the core of her heart, and the apple of her eye. At least the new Papa would be a terrible ninny, if he were not prepared to decline with thanks a wedding present as large as life--of such a stepson. And, indeed, it should be all one to me, as well. Having always had the honor of enjoying the haughty damsel's undivided aversion, it can make no difference to me, whether her choice be M. or N.; it does not in any way alter my position, as a vermin,--toad, bug, spider, worm--what you please--to be trodden upon and crushed, were it not for the risk of soiling a dainty shoe----"

"Nonsense--you exaggerate, as you always do--but tell me--"

"Whether I exaggerate or not, n.o.body can tell except myself;" and he distorted his ign.o.ble mouth to a grimace of atrocious spite. "Why should I make any secret of it?--On this very spot, not ten days ago, I came and made her a formal offer of my hand and heart. Upon which she just walked out and left me standing, as if I had been an idiot, not worth answering!--Bah!--I can laugh at it now!--I can't think what possessed me! I am not such a beggar as to care for her thalers.

If it were not for my own amus.e.m.e.nt, I could throw over the whole concern--give up this daubing and scrawling business, and go home to my own place, where my father and mother are well to do, living comfortably on their own broad acres.--Only I was such an a.s.s as to be smitten with this scornful damsel, and I would have been willing to forget that she is no chicken; (several years older than myself in fact.) And she--I tell you she looked at me as if a toad had spit its venom on her. Death and d.a.m.nation! wouldn't I have given her a piece of my mind! Only I thought: '_She_ will never marry--she will have n.o.body--she must have found a thing or two in her past life, to disgust her with man and marriage;' and so I choked upon my wrath. But this is quite another affair. If she hangs out other colors, and capitulates to another suitor, I see she did not think me good enough--"

He swallowed down the rest of his abuse, and only waved about his hands, in confused convulsive gesticulation.

"Are you sure of what you are saying?" asked Walter in a low voice, that was trembling with some strong suppressed emotion. "Who is the man?--is it a settled thing?--And yet no--it is impossible--only last night--"

"What do you venture to call impossible, when you are speaking of a woman?? Bah! teach _me_ their tricks and dodges!--_I_ saw how late it was last night, when you left her!--I dare say she would not let you go, but coddled you to her heart's content, it being the last time. But I tell you it is as true--as true as that the sun is s.h.i.+ning.--She is going to be married--and her choice is no other that wretched quilldriver of a lawyer--"

"Hansen?--the Doctor?"--

"If he be not the man, and my story be not true, I give you leave to call me rogue. Just now I was in the little lumber room off the Meister's, where he keeps his samples of colors, and I was looking out some that we shall want to-morrow--for he blew me up about them yesterday--when I heard Mamsell Helene come into his room, and they had a long confabulation. I could not hear it all, but the upshot of it was, that she means to take him. Of course she made a fuss about it--but when he said: 'He is to dine with us to-day, and you can give him your answer,' she was mum as a mouse. If she did not mean it to be favorable, I much mistake her if she would not have declined the pleasure of eating her dinner with him first. She is not so fond of speaking up, and saying no to a fellow, as I know by my own experience."

"Surely you must have heard wrong, Peter;" and the young fellow fell into a fit of musing; "it can't be possible."

"Can't be possible!--but what's the use of talking of men's business to a baby. I only repeated the thing that I might not choke upon it. For a girl like that, to go and marry a rusty fusty lawyer--a scribbler of deeds and parchments! He has not a conception of what she is worth, except in thalers! Ha!--would not she be a delicate morsel for an artist, who looks farther than a trifle of white and red and those mincing ways that attract the crowd. What does a lawyer know about the lines of her face?--and that she has a figure fit to drive a fellow crazy? She does not show it off, to be sure--she wraps to the chin, as if she were a mummy,--more's the pity!--a stone might weep to see her!

But for a man who has eyes in his head, one little finger is enough to construe the whole figure by, and you might search the world over, before you could find--"

"Silence!" interrupted Walter pa.s.sionately--"I will not hear another word." He had sprung to his feet, with a flaming face. "Get out! I say, and never let me hear that you have spoken your foul thoughts to any other living soul--or else--"

And he struck his clenched fist upon the table, with a violence that made the very walls shake.

"Milksop! baby face!" and Peter gnashed his teeth, while he retreated from his immediate neighbourhood; "It shall go to its mother--it shall--and have its pap--and sit on its own mammy's lap, and have a smart new dress for her wedding-day. Ha! such a fellow as that is not worthy of a man's confidence. I did feel sorry to see you in a cunning woman's leading strings; and I pitied you--but now go to!--I despise you as much as I pitied you before. We two have had our last words together."

And with his most vicious look, Peter sauntered away, whistling.

Walter remained standing on the selfsame spot for half an hour, at least, without moving. His brain was reeling--he fetched his breath heavily, and shut his eyes, as though he felt ashamed to see himself by the light of day, while such thoughts were seething in his imagination.

At last he heard Helen's step upon the stairs; he felt as if he had been scalded, and impelled by some inexplicable instinct, he seized his cap, and fled; through the garden, out into the open country.

She heard him go, but she had no suspicion that it was from her he fled; she went to the window and looked after him as long as she could catch a glimpse of his long light hair among the leafless shrubberies.

She thought she had wept away all that had been so heavy on her heart.

People who are sparing of their tears expect wonders from them, and the good they are supposed to do, when they do flow. But she found they had done very little to solace her.

What made her weep so bitterly? She had long schooled herself to meet aggression with the tranquil energy of a mind, that no contradiction of fate can disappoint or surprise, for the reason that it is entirely without hopes or wishes.

She believed that she had nothing to expect from life--nothing to gain.

Now, she had been suddenly reminded how much she had to lose.

First of all:--to a proud spirit the bitterest loss--confidence in her own heart. Those unsparing words, concerning her relations with a child, whom she had seen grow up to manhood, had sounded strange and incomprehensible when she had first heard them--she believed that she could shake them from her, as an insult. Other cares that had arisen during that interview with her brother-in-law, had then appeared more urgent. But as soon as she had found herself alone in her silent room, all other cares had dissolved like shadows, and the words she had so scornfully disowned--these words alone remained.

She thought over the ten years that had pa.s.sed, since she had first entered that dreary house; when the intimidated boy, dumb between his adopted parents, who quarrelled over him daily, with ever-increasing discord, had come to her at once, and poured forth all the sorrows of his little heart to her, and had clung to her with overflowing love and confidence. Without many words, he had understood that she was to be his protectress.

It was a task she did not find easy always, especially as opposed to her own sister. But the compensation was a thousandfold, in her tenderness for the child, in whom his early hards.h.i.+ps appeared to have blighted all the gaiety and elasticity of his age; and now under her genial influence, she saw these expand, brighter and more spontaneous, from year to year.

And she knew that he owed her more than this mere deliverance from bodily durance. She had been as indefatigable in the tending of his mind; in helping him to complete in private, the defective education of the common school which he attended daily. In this, she had no small opposition to suffer from her pupil and his artistic tastes; not to speak of her own inclination to do his bidding, instead of enforcing hers. Far pleasanter she would have found it, to sit working by his side, listening to his good-humoured rattle, while he was busy over some architectural drawing; than to tie him down to the thread of a weary lesson-book, that was to drag him through some dry essentials of education. But in all things she had taught herself to consider, first of all, his real wants and future welfare. She had never trifled with her maternal duties, nor been childish with her child.

Was it strange that, in time, the course of all her plans and wishes fell into this single channel? that, waking or sleeping, he was ever before her eyes? that these followed him, unconsciously, in all his movements when he was present; and, when absent, that she looked as constantly towards the door, and listened to nothing so interesting as his returning step?

And now when she mentally compared him with, all the other men she had known in all these years, was she not justified in believing that she could do without any and all of these, if only he remained to her? And there was no weak idolatry in this; she had never deceived herself. She saw that he was neither handsome, nor graceful, not even of very engaging manners; she often teased him about his awkward ways and helpless movements, and his duncolored shock of hair; she acknowledged that his features were commonplace; that his figure was a clothes-stick, for all the tailor's pains to make a man of him. Yet there was a charm about him, that even strangers and coa.r.s.er natures, she observed, seldom could resist; a breath of freshest, purest youthfulness;--an innate tact of the heart; a dash of that genuine genial humour, that lends wings to the soul, and raises it high above the vulgar wors.h.i.+p of any of the golden calves and idols of the day. It was strange;--but with this young pupil of hers, in worldly matters a child, she could discourse of the last aim and end of all mortal life, as though they had been centenarians in experience, and in years.

Thus it had been, and this had been their happiness; and was it to be no more? had it suddenly become so dangerous? Was it now to be avoided as a snare? She had been told to her face, that it was for the sake of this lad, that she rejected all her suitors. Well, she would not attempt to deny it. She would have deceived any man to whom she would have sworn to be only his. This feeling had grown to be a pa.s.sion; but a pa.s.sion that was hallowed by years of purest tenderness, of most unselfish sacrifice. She looked upon him as her own; and had she not a right to him?--what would he have been, without her?

And was she really to give him up?--The thought was more than she could bear. _He_ did not wish to leave her--_he_ knew how necessary she was to him. Could there really be danger in remaining as they were?--To him, certainly none; his whole life lay before him yet, wide and distant. _He_ could not lose by perfecting his growth in shade and solitude. To suppose that her own presence could prove dangerous to him, seemed nothing less than madness. She felt herself older by ten additional years to those she already was.