The Children of the World Part 33

"How long is it since you found this lady and drew her out of the water?" he asked.

"Not half an hour. But no one can tell how long she's been floating,"

said the man to whom the boat belonged. "I'd gone to sleep, and suddenly woke and remembered that I had left my new jacket on deck, and if the snow kept on it would be ruined by morning. As I went astern, I heard something strike the boat like a log of wood. The lady must have a hard skull or it would have been broken. Do you know her, sir?" Mohr made no reply. He had enough to do to collect his thoughts and decide upon what was to be done.

"Have you a litter?" he asked. "You can make three thalers by putting the lady on it and carrying her a hundred paces to a house where she will be received. I'll answer for the rest, and if the police should afterwards find out that you didn't give them notice of the affair, I'll take all the responsibility. But make haste, before it's too late!--There, lay her flat on her back and cover her with this cloak.

And now forward--"

Not another word was spoken. His hasty, imperious manner, the promised reward and the prospect of getting rid of the disagreeable business, urged the sailors to the utmost speed. Two stout men lifted the motionless figure on a flat frame, which was used for unloading baskets of fruit, and fastened her firmly on it with a broad girdle. Her clothes and hair were still dripping with water, as she was raised and carefully carried up the steps of the landing. Then the bearers moved swiftly forward with their burden, while the others remained on the boats dividing the money among them. Mohr was the only one who followed the bier. He had not trusted himself to touch the lifeless body, but as it was raised he bent over the litter to keep it steady, and had brushed her hand with his cheek; its icy coldness froze the blood in his veins.

He ordered the bearers to stop before the artist's little house, but was obliged to ring the bell at the gate of the timber-yard a long time, before any one moved. How terribly long the moments were! Who could tell whether a hundred seconds more or less might not decide whether that motionless breast would ever again be heaved by the breath of life?

At last a door behind the wood pile opened, a flickering light appeared, and the zaunkonig's voice was heard asking: "what's the matter?" A very few words were enough to urge the kind-hearted little man to breathless haste. His trembling hands instantly opened the little door beside the gate, and without another syllable being uttered, the sad procession moved along the dark path to the little house.

CHAPTER X.

At this same late hour the boudoir of the singer, whose acquaintance we made at the PaG.o.da, looked very bright and cheerful. A candelabrum with five candles was burning on the daintily spread table, at which the gay beauty sat with her friend, resting on her laurels after the first night of a new opera.

"You were charming to-night, Adele," said Marquard, as he pushed back a plate filled with oyster sh.e.l.ls and rose to light a cigar at the candelabrum. "Really, loveliest of witches, you improve in each new part, and I shan't be surprised if one day you outgrow even me. But you've one talent that compels my highest esteem: I admire it even more than your acting, your singing, or the black art by which you make a whole audience madly in love with you."

"And that is?"

"Your talent for eating oysters. You laugh, Adelina. But I'm perfectly serious, believe me. I would engage to describe the mind and heart of any woman with whom I had been ten minutes without any other knowledge of her than eating oysters together, and never make a mistake--with the sole stipulation that it's not her first essay in the n.o.ble art, when even the most gifted person may set about it awkwardly."

"Well, and wherein does my merit in this direction consist?"

"First call Jenny and let her carry away the bouquets which have been thrown to you to-day. The odor of champagne, Havanas, oysters and roses all at once, are too much of a good thing and we shall have the headache. Besides, I'm far from being vain enough to think the couch of a beautiful girl softer, because it's strewn with rose leaves bestowed by less fortunate admirers."

"You're terribly _blase_!" laughed the singer. "If you were not so amusing, I'd have discarded you long ago. But be quick, tell me your oyster theory."

"No," he answered with a calm smile, leaning comfortably back on the little sofa; "some other time. The subject's more profound than you suppose. All themes which trench on the boundaries between the sensual and the intellectual are very subtle, and I've too much scientific knowledge to make short work of such delicate things. Besides, directly after your declaration that you only tolerate me because I'm amusing, I should be a fool to deliver a lecture on the physiology of enjoyment, instead of giving a practical ill.u.s.tration of the subject. You may do me the favor of taking off your head-dress, child. You know I've a foolish fancy for pulling your poodle head."

"Indeed!" she replied. "First give me a light for my cigarette, and then I want the explanation you promised me yesterday: the reason why you'll never marry. You remember, I had to go to rehearsal and you to a consultation."

"And you've not already discovered the answer yourself? Oh! Adelina, your love for me clouds your clear intellect!"

"You insolent, conceited fellow! But he's incorrigible," laughed the girl, as she carelessly took off the heavy false braids and laid them on the chair beside the wine-cooler. She really looked far prettier in her short and now disordered curls.

"There, now you're yourself again," said Marquard looking at her through his gold spectacles with unfeigned satisfaction. "And since you've laid aside all deceit, I'll honestly acknowledge, that out of pure sentimentality, I shall never marry; my tombstone will bear the inscription: 'Here lies the virgin Marquard.'"

"You and sentimentality!"--she laughed merrily.

"To be sure, my fair friend. Judge for yourself: don't you think it would be pastoral, that I should show sensitiveness if my wife were not faithful to me? yet I myself should be just as devoted to polytheism after marriage as before. I couldn't help it you see, but I'm too just to expect that a good, virtuous creature would be satisfied with such a small fraction of a husband."

"As if the right woman wouldn't be able to improve you and make you a whole man and husband!"

"Improve me, my friend!" he sighed with a comical pathos in his look and tone. "In case you should ever want a faithful husband, let me warn you to beware of doctors in choosing one. We really ought to take a vow of celibacy, like the Catholic priests. The man to whom you confess, must be either a stone or a saint, to escape the contagion of your sins. And yet I'd rather listen to the symptoms of an ailing heart, than hear of a contusion on the knee. Why do you move away from me?"

"Because you're a very frivolous fellow and have had too much champagne. Besides, it's late."

"Too late--to go. I left word at home that my servant needn't expect me. As I fortunately have no wife, I'll for once be as comfortable as other married men and sleep for one night without being disturbed by domestic troubles or by other people's. Here I'm no doctor, here I'm a man and may be permitted to act like one." He threw away his cigar and tenderly approaching the young girl, took both hands in his and swung them to and fro.

At this moment Adele's maid entered, holding a card in her hand. "The gentleman's in the ante-room and earnestly begs to see the Herr Doctor."

"Tell him he may go--Why did you say I was here?"

"He didn't ask me. He gave me the card at once, in spite of my denial--"

"Mohr! Good Heavens, what brings him here at this hour! If Balder--excuse me, Adele, but I must see what the trouble is." He rushed out of the door so hastily, that he upset the basket in which Adele's little terrier was quietly sleeping. While she tried to still the loud barking of the frightened animal, Marquard had hurried into the ante-room with the question about Balder on his lips.

"I believe all is going on well at the tun," said Mohr. "But you must come with me at once: some one has met with an accident--we've not a moment to lose."

"Holloa, my friend!" replied Marquard, suddenly relapsing into his usual indifferent tone. "If that's all, four houses beyond, on the right hand side as you go out of the door, lives a very worthy colleague of mine, who has little practice as yet and probably will be more inclined at this moment to obey your philanthropic summons--"

"You'll come with me, Marquard," said Mohr in a hollow voice, which trembled with a terrible anxiety. "Christiane has drowned herself; we've just taken her out of the river; G.o.d only knows whether it's not already too late--" He tottered as he wearily gasped out the words; his powerful frame seemed ready to sink, yet he did not take the chair Marquard pushed toward him.

"You ought to have said so at once," grumbled the latter. "That's quite a different matter. Sit down two minutes, I only want to get my hat.

The child in there needn't know anything about it yet."

An instant after he came out of Adele's room, and not a word, not an expression of his grave face betrayed any remembrance that he had been so rudely interrupted in his baccha.n.a.lian levity. When they were sitting together in the droschky, whose driver incited by Mohr's double fare, drove at a furious pace, he said to his silent, gloomy companion:

"Among all the painful and unpleasant tasks expected of us physicians, nothing is more sad, at least to me, than to do my duty in such a case as this. Every one owes Nature a death. But to arouse a poor fool, who thinks he's settled his debt and compel him to count out the whole sum again, because he didn't pay it the first time in the current coin of the country, is really a contemptible business, and enough to disgust one with the whole trade. I've been called in on such occasions four times, and amid all the rubbing and manipulating, have always wished my efforts might be vain."

"I hope this time, you'll--"

"You need have no anxiety. The professional spirit is stronger than philosophy or humanity. _Tiat experimentum et pereat mundus_, that's in this case: _vivat_ a poor creature who has nothing to live for, but every reason to curse existence. Christiane! Have you any suspicion what induced her to do this? To be sure, we ought to remember that she has a fancy for taking French leave of pleasant company. Is anything known of her circ.u.mstances? An unhappy love affair? But you're like the statue of the Commandant!"

"Pardon me if I'm a poor subst.i.tute for the society you've just left,"

faltered Mohr. "I--my nerves are no longer the strongest; this has taken a violent hold upon me; between ourselves, Marquard, this girl, who seemed by no means attractive to the rest of you, _I_ loved very dearly."

"My poor boy!" murmured the physician, as in the darkness he took Mohr's cold hand and pressed it gently. Then no more was said. Mohr threw himself back in one corner of the carriage and buried his face in his handkerchief. When they alighted at the timber-yard, Marquard saw that it was flushed and wet with tears.

The little artist was standing at the open door of the housel "At last!" he exclaimed. "We're nearly dead with anxiety and impatience.

However there really seems to be some hope. Leah thinks she's beginning to breathe. Turn to the right, if you please. We've laid her on my bed in the studio."

"Stay outside, Heinrich," said Marquard, "and I don't need the young lady either. I shall manage better alone." He gave a few directions, said a soothing word to Leah, who was gazing at him with a strangely intent expression, like that of a somnambulist, and then proceeded to his difficult task.

The three were now once more together in the very room where, a few hours before they had chatted so comfortably around the tea table. But no one broke the silence. The artist had seated himself opposite to the bust of his dead wife, and seemed to be questioning the mute features about the eternal secret of life and death. Mohr, with his hands crossed behind his back, paced restlessly up and down the room like a caged lion, pausing at every dozen steps as if to listen. Leah sat at the window, gazing out into the storm. She did not move a limb, her eyes were closed, but not for a single second did she lose her consciousness of what was pa.s.sing around her. The cause of this paralysis was neither bodily exhaustion nor the stupor that often follows great excitement. When she removed the clothing from the stranger's motionless body to wrap it in blankets, she had found under the wet corsets a small, leather case, fastened with a red ribbon.

Thinking it might contain a letter which would give some cause for her mad act, or a card with her name, which Mohr had not thought to tell them, she opened it, unnoticed by the others. It contained neither letter nor card, but a photograph stained, to be sure, by the water, but in which she nevertheless recognized at the first glance--Edwin. We need add nothing farther to explain why she sat so absently at the window hour after hour.

At last--it was probably about four o'clock in the morning--they heard the door on the opposite side of the entry open, and directly after Marquard entered.

"Good morning," he said dryly. "We've won the victory and driven the enemy from all his positions. My adjutant, your excellent old servant, Herr Konig, has orders to pursue him and clear the battle field of all marauders. I'm going home to get a few hours sleep, and I shall then have the honor of seeing you again."

He bowed carelessly and left the room. As he was groping in the dark pa.s.sage to find the door, he suddenly felt himself seized from behind and clasped in two trembling arms. Mohr lay sobbing on his neck.