L'Arrabiata and Other Tales Part 21

She started; a new sensation, strangely sweet, thrilled to her heart.

She laughed, as we do laugh, to ourselves, when we are quite alone, at the memory of some delicious moment in the past; of happy love--of brilliant triumph--of success in some feat of our boyish days. What it was that delighted her so much, she could scarcely have defined.

"What makes you think such silly things?" she asked, completely returning to their old footing; "don't you know I shall never be going to be married to any man? When one has had a great big boy to educate, and just got him out of the roughest rudiments, one really has no time for other people; and who would thank me for bringing them such an unruly step-son? Who put these fancies into your head?"

He told her; and they sate there side by side, for some minutes, without saying anything.

"No, indeed, my dear boy," she began at last, in a tone of singular solemnity; "I never mean to go and leave you, for the sake of any human creature living. It is no sacrifice on my part; and you owe me nothing for it. I should have to chain up my own heart first of all, were I ever to settle down to any other mode of life, _any_ life in which you were not the first and foremost. I have felt this for years, and shall never feel otherwise probably as long as I live. But for you, there must, of necessity, come a time, when the claims of your little mother will have to be reduced by half; when she will have to content herself with only a duty share in your thoughts and feelings; lucky if she does not fare worse, and be stowed away in the lumber-room of memory, like an antiquated piece of furniture. Don't you contradict me; I know well enough what I have to expect, and a true mother never thinks of herself. All mothers have to bear the same, and the best way to bear it, is with a brave face; and now, away with care! For the present, I am yours, and you are mine; and as far as I am concerned, nothing shall ever part us. I give you my word, and here is my hand upon it, and now--let us go to bed, and sleep upon it."

She rose, and he mechanically did the same. When she stood at the top of the staircase, and he a few steps lower, she just reached to the tall stripling's forehead; she threw her arms tenderly about his neck.

"You are not to get into the habit of that ugly frown, mind that!" she said caressingly; "frowns don't become you, and you have no reason to frown on life like any old grumpy misanthrope--such a spoiled creature as you may well afford to laugh,--smooth away, I pray, all these precocious wrinkles; and now, my son, good night!" She kissed him softly on the forehead, and pa.s.sed her hand lightly over his tangling curls. Then, taking up her candle, she glided back into her own room.

The night that followed on such an eventful day, brought Helen both repose and sleep. She believed her difficulties to be overcome, and her troubles postponed for years at least. But she would hardly have looked so cheerfully after Walter, as he walked away to his day's work at the Burgermeister's Villa, had she known that he had not been able to close his eyes till morning.

In painting that saloon, he was destined to have no a.s.sistance but that of the two boys: the Meister being confined to his room, and Peter Lars nowhere to be found. It was rumoured that he had been seen at the "Star." It appeared to be his plan to stay away, and let himself be missed so long as to be received with thanks, and not with abuse, when he did come back at last. However the Meister seemed quite disposed to do without him, gave Walter his instructions, wrote to the capital for more a.s.sistance, and sent the truant's things after him to the Star, without wasting any words upon the subject.

Thus a few days elapsed. The atmosphere of the house was lowering; never a laugh now, nor a gay word. These three inmates--for Helen too, had begun to wear a graver face--lived on together, without exchanging more than a necessary word. When Walter came home in the evening--for he did not even leave his work for dinner--he would swallow down the food that had been kept for him, and then go straight to his room, on plea of fatigue, regardless of the questions asked by poor Helen's melancholy eyes. She well knew that if he left her, it was not to go to bed; for in the morning she always found his light burned down.

And if he left home weary, it was not from over-eagerness to get to his work. The villa was situated at about two miles' distance from the town, just where the forest began and the country became more undulated. It had originally been built as a ducal shooting-box. It had pa.s.sed through the hands of numerous owners--through some very careless ones; and at last, in a farmer's, had been turned to more profitable purposes. When the Burgermeister bought it, he found it dignified to boast that he had a mere country-seat--a villa that cost so much and rented nothing; and so he decided on having it entirely renovated in the original style, and on opening the gardens to the admiration of the public in the summer season. The distance was no more than a pleasant walk for the townspeople. Yet Walter had been known to take two hours to it and more. The boy apprentices enjoyed a game of ball in the sh.e.l.l-gallery, or a little mischief in the gardens; while their young taskmaster, in his meditations, loitered about among the leafless glades, until the sun, darting into every nook and thicket, would rise so high, as to remind him that he had been sent there in some other capacity than that of overseer to the building of the birds'-nests.

Then he would hurry back to the house, scare the lads with a harshness they had never seen in him before, and fall as violently to work as though he meant to do in a day, or in half a day, what would be the work of weeks. But he would soon let his brush drop, and sit motionless upon the scaffolding, staring at some vacant spot on the opposite wall, where his fancy had conjured up a charming vision--a pensive face, and the turn of a graceful head resting on snowy shoulders, a pair of admirably moulded arms, of that smooth pearly white, which art so rarely renders, and is but too apt to turn the head of the artist who attempts it.

Almost half the week had been spent in this desultory way, when one morning the Meister called up Walter, and believing the ceiling of the sh.e.l.l-gallery to be finished, all except the centre-piece, he gave him an old engraving to sketch in with charcoal in the necessarily increased proportions. The Meister proposed to be there before twelve o'clock, to see if the sketch would do. It was an engraving after Claude Lorraine, with some architecture in the foreground, set off by a group of lofty trees. As for the sunrise in the background, that, the Meister thought, he should like to do himself.

Walter set off with far more alacrity than usual. His task allured him; frequent practice had made him quick at landscape-drawing, whereas he always preferred to leave the figures to his comrades.

The ceiling had been originally planned with a centre-piece of allegorical figures; but, of course, since Peter Lars' defection, that was not to be thought of now.

Walter was just thinking of this disagreeable personage, and rejoicing in his absence, when he heard a voice behind him, and looking round, he saw the very man coming after him at a brisk pace. He stopped, and waited for him with an instinct of vague curiosity. He wanted to discover why he had been so suddenly turned off--he had heard no particulars.

The black-faced little fellow, who was walking along in full travelling trim, with staff and knapsack, appeared to be in his happiest mood; his pursed-up lips wore their sliest sneer, with even more decided mischief in it than usual. His eyebrows were drawn up to his cap, and as he called after Walter, his voice sounded like the treble tones of a chaffing boy.

"You are the very man I wanted to see;" he began, even before he had come up with him. "Scheiden und meiden thut weh!--partings are grievous, you know; and though I could have done all my partings with my princ.i.p.al in writing, well enough, I wished to take leave of you, for I had a thing or two to tell you, that would not have done quite so well in a letter. So if your people did not forbid you to contaminate yourself with an outlawed miscreant like myself, I will walk your way with you a bit."

"As you please; but tell me what you did, Peter, to bring things to such a sudden crisis?"

"Did? pshaw! a piece of nonsense! I was a donkey, my very dear and very proper young friend, as, of course, you have heard--unless perhaps they did not tell you, lest evil communications should corrupt good manners."

"The chief thing, I suppose, I do know," said Walter reddening. He only knew what old Christel had told him; viz., that Peter had come home drunk, and been disrespectful to Helen.

"The chief thing!" sneered Peter; "a pretty chief thing to make a row about! I have done many such chief things, and more to the purpose, in my life, and not a c.o.c.k crowed after me. If I had not been such a confounded a.s.s as to let myself be found out too soon, and get kicked out like a mangy hound _before_ I had got what I came for, I could have laughed in my sleeve, even if they did kick me out _after_. As it is, I have made a fool of myself for nothing--got blown up and turned off, while others remain behind to laugh at me as I deserve. Eh! why don't you laugh. Propriety? You see _I_ laugh at my own clumsiness!"

"I don't see what there is to laugh at," said Walter coldly; for he bitterly repented of having suffered this little villain to walk by his side.

"Don't, then," he said jeeringly; "Milksop that you are!--You have a spirit that is as blond as your head, and as your mother's was, when she suffered herself to be so taken in--"

"Fellow!" cried Walter, flaring up with sudden pa.s.sion; "if ever I hear my mother's name on your lips,--" and he held his strong fist in the wizened face of his tormentor, who stood still with a look of defiance.

"Softly, old boy, take it coolly," he said. "There are moments, I am aware, when even the sweetest milk is apt to turn sour; but never mind; I don't see what I should gain by quarrelling with you before I go. You always treated me fairly--like a gentleman, I may say; for our princ.i.p.al I was a mere machine; for our adorable Mamsell a toad; you were the only person in the house who treated me as a fellow-creature; and so, old fellow, I mean to do you a good turn before I go. When all the rest are abusing me, you can say: 'Well, poor devil, he was not so bad a fellow after all!'"

"Come to the point;" said Walter, losing patience; "I have work to do."

"Work, have you? Ah! poor dear, I dare say. Now you have to be first and last; man-of-all-work, and Jack-of-all-trades, until the Meister finds another Peter Lars--if he ever does--or ever looks for one. When the old screw took you in, out of Christian charity, of course he had no idea that you could ever grow up to be a man, and do the work of two, and earn him a mint of money. Oh, no!--not he! he never dreamed of such a thing! I say, has he ever increased your wages? or is my young gentleman too high for such low ideas?"

"What are you driving at? what do you mean by all this nonsense?"

cried Walter, out of patience. "What can it signify to you, if my foster-father--"

"Foster-father!" echoed the other, while his eyes were dancing with malicious mirth. "Well, for a foster-father, perhaps, it might be fair enough; but when we come to think of what a real father will do for a son, we can't say much for what he has done for you--especially when we consider what he ought to have done for your mother, that he left undone."

Here he looked Walter full in the face. The young fellow stood before him with heaving chest and quivering nostril, in fearful agitation. He staggered back, and leaned against one of the trees that formed the avenue. With a shriek of sardonic laughter: "Ha! is it possible?" he cried, "just look at him! he really has no suspicion how things stand!

Ha! sancta simplicitas!--well, it was your luck that made me stop a day or two at the 'Star', and lay hold of that old fellow of a porter, who used to be in the Meister's service. I made him tell me the whole story; and, but for me, this pretty pattern of a helpless orphan might have lived to threescore-and-ten, without being so wise as to know its own father!"

Walter still stood thunderstruck--his lips moved, but his voice failed him.

"What makes the boy stand there, turning to stone, as though he had just heard the trumpet sound for the judgment day? I say, don't you go on being the soft chap you are, that anybody can take and twist to their own purposes. You open your eyes, and look sharp, and take what rightfully belongs to you. Take my advice--maintain your place in the world in a proper manner, even if you did come into it in a manner that may be called less proper.

"Come, let us be walking. I have a long way to go, and feel a most desperate desire to get out of sight of that den of Philistines behind us."

"Peter!" said Walter, struggling painfully to recover his composure; "Is there more in what you have just been telling me, than mere talk and gossipping nonsense?"

"Ask the old one, if you don't believe me. Ha! shouldn't I like to see his face, when you come upon him unawares, and call him 'Dad!' And I tell you it is all as true, and as well proved as twice two. And if you had not been really as great a baby as they took such pains to make you, you would have put this and that together, and worked out your little reckoning years ago. I did, for one, as soon as ever I put my nose into the house. I sometimes tried to give you a hint; and just because you took no notice, 'Aha!' thinks I, 'he knows all about it, and makes believe not to; and of course he has his reasons.'

"Besides, one has only to look at you two together to say--that is the block, and this the chip. The same long limbs, the same build--put you in the same clothes, and look at you from behind, and not one man in ten could say which was which. Of course, what is grown dark and grey and grizzled in him, is carried out in pink and white and yellow with you--the colouring must have been your mother's; and a deuced pretty woman she was, the old porter says. He saw her once, not long before she died; he had to take some money to her--on the sly, of course; since then he has never been able to forget her, he says, and that his master felt so spooney about her, he can't wonder at; far rather, that he could give her up, and marry the wife he did--our charming Mamsell's sister, you know; the two sisters were totally different in everything--except the tin, which was the same. I rather think the Meister must have had a try at the younger sister first, and been rejected; she was a haughty 'Frolen' even then, you see; and so he turned to the other sister, who was neither haughty nor handsome, and so she took him. However, I suppose she wouldn't, if she had but known of your own sweet self--you were just beginning to run about in your first little boots--and had known that her precious husband used, as often as he could get away, to go and have a peep at his former family about three or four times a year, on his business journeys. It was all kept so cosy, that not a soul ever heard of it. A sly fox your governor was--excuse the candour of the remark. But sly he must have been in this business, if you really did live so long without ever having smelt a rat; and in other respects you are as quick a lad as may be. His wife, however, somehow or other, in time did smell it, and hunted it down, and there was the devil to pay and all, as you may fancy. She kept the keys of the strong box, so of course it lay in her power to stop his business-travelling, and she did. More fool she! for it could not tend to improve his temper, you know; and at last, when a letter came--was it a letter, or the porter?--to say that your mother was ill and dying, and past recovery, you can imagine that the governor was not disposed to stand on ceremony. He started off alone, and did not come back for three weeks and more; he had not written either--what could he have written about her illness to his wife? Of course, the worst news of the one, were the best to the other. However, he did come back at last; and she might have lived in peace now that the other woman was dead and buried; only she couldn't. And there was the greatest row of all when one day he came home and surprised her with a little present--orphan or foundling, or whatever he was pleased to call you,--she might be as fractious as she would, the child was there, and there was nothing to be done but to be cruel to it.

"And this she honestly did, to her heart's content, as you know best yourself. The governor was forced to let two and two make five; he was seldom at home, and you were a soft chap then, it seems, as you are now, and you made no resistance, nor ever even complained of her. At last the old porter could stand the thing no longer; and so he spoke up, and told her it was a shame, and not the poor brat's fault if his mother had pleased his father better than such a vixen could. Of course she made the house too hot to hold him, and he said he felt glad to go, for he could not bear to see a child so knocked about.

"It appears the Meister felt the same, and so he wrote to his sister-in-law to come and stay with them. His wife was ill with spite and rage, and things in the house went topsy-turvy. Well, and so our adorable Helen came, and what she did, I need not tell you. So there it is; and it is a special satisfaction to me"--and he gave a sneering laugh--"that I got hold of Johann, and warmed him with a bottle of Bordeaux, till he let the cat out of the bag. It was a fair trick to play to that old screw.

"You can act upon it as you please; but I know, if I stood in your shoes, I should not let myself be treated like a fatherless beggar, and fed on charity. I would speak up and take another tone. He should send me to travel, I know; with something in my pockets to c.h.i.n.k as I went along, to do or to leave undone, what I pleased. What business had he to go and sell your mother for any amount of money-bags whatever? If he did, I should expect the money bags to pay me for it."

With this they had reached the forest Walter never spoke a word; breathing hard, he strode away as if Lucifer were at his heels. The dwarf kept up with him, waving about his stick, and gesticulating with grimaces so grotesque, as would have made any other companion laugh.

Now he stood still at a spot where the roads diverged, lifted his cap, and turned round, for a last look at the little town he was leaving.

"I am truly thankful, that we definitively quarrelled, the Meister and I, and did not make it up. Do you know, I actually did demean myself so far as to write him a note this morning, with the conditions on which I would have consented to return to him. For that he must miss me sorely, no one can deny. So without ceremony, I wrote. I _may_ have been too free and easy, and thawed too fast. But he certainly gave me back as good as he got; for you know, when he is in the vein, he can write and talk like Buonaparte; let him!--If I did knock under, it was for the miserable reason that I could not find it in my heart to part from our charming Mamsell, for all her abuse and scorn.

"Bah! when once I am away from her; I shall come to my senses soon enough. But what I wanted to say to you, my boy, was this: follow my example, do as I do, and cut your chalks. You have no reason to fear that she will treat you ill; far more reason to fear the contrary.

"Do you know that she has given warning to her dangling lawyer?--and do you know why? I will tell you; simply because she is smitten by those two forget-me-nots of yours; and as you happen to be a spoon, you may take your oath that some fine day you will inevitably be sold--that is, married. You may stare if you like, and write me down an a.s.s, if it be not as I tell you. It would be a pity; for, after all, she is your aunt; if not exactly, still she is old enough to be; and by the time you are a man in your prime, like me, she will be a withered old thing, and the very devil for jealousy, and you will have to sit by the chimney-corner all your life, instead of seeing the world and enjoying life while you are young, as every man ought to do.

"If I had been able to get her, I suppose I should have repented; but then I was madly in love with her, which you are not. With you it would have become a habit, if you go on as you are doing now.

"Well, well, no doubt you will cut your wisdom-teeth, at last. Think on my words, my boy, for I wish you well. Heavens and earth! what a face!--Have I upset you so by helping you to find a father?--and by no means, let me tell you, the worst father you could have;--not by a great deal, though I certainly have no reason to speak well of him. And now fare thee well! old boy, and carry back my compliments to those Philistines in their den. If we should chance to meet again somewhere or other, knocking about the world, I hope I shall find you a trump: give us a parting fist."

He held out his hand, but Walter did not take it; he continued staring vacantly before him and did not move a finger. With a volley of parting imprecations, half vicious and half facetious, Peter Lars twirled his stick, and went sauntering on his way, whistling.