A Sister's Love Part 29

"She had drawn me to the sofa as she spoke, and hidden her face on my shoulder. Amid laughing and crying the words came out, all self-consciousness was gone, that unapproachable harshness of her nature had disappeared, and she was now like any other girl expecting her lover. She trembled and sobbed, and wound her arms tightly about my neck--the proud, cold Anna Maria had become a happy child. What a fulness of love and resignation now gushed from her heart, now that happiness touched it! 'So do laugh me well out of it, aunt,' she said, again.

"I stroked her hair caressingly; how gladly would I have laughed her out of it! But in my soul, too, there were doubts, inexplicable doubts; and why? There was really no reasonable ground for them, no, no! Susanna might have denied the walk in the garden because the evening air was prohibited on account of her health; and just because she stood under the linden and waved her handkerchief--was that any proof? And I thought of my letter to Sturmer, and really had to laugh.

"'Anna Maria,' said I, 'I will laugh at you, but you must laugh back at me. Only think, yesterday I sent an announcement of the engagement to Sturmer; I could not keep it to myself any longer that Klaus is engaged.'

"She straightened up with a start.

"'Heavens, the papers! I forget everything. The banns--I must see to that first, aunt.'

"To-day the hours seemed to pa.s.s much more slowly than usual. Toward four o'clock I sat waiting at the window; my heartbeat as violently as Anna Maria's, perhaps. She, I knew, was down-stairs in her room, restless and anxious. Half-past four struck, five, and Sturmer was not yet here. Instead, Susanna came into my room and sat down opposite me; she had her kitten in her arms and began to play with it.

"I should have liked to send her away, but no suitable excuse occurred to me at that moment. It is fearful how slowly the minutes pa.s.s when one is counting them in anxious expectation; heavy as lead, each second seems to spin itself out to eternity, and one starts at every sound. No, that was a farm-wagon, now a horseman; ah! it is only the bailiff.

"Susanna felt my silence and restlessness painfully at any rate. 'Oh, it is fearfully tiresome in the country in winter!' she sighed. 'What can one do all day long?'

"'Have you written to Klaus yet?' I asked.

"'O dear, no!' she replied, with a suppressed yawn. 'I don't know what to write him; I have no experience, I hear and see nothing.'

"'Well, an engaged girl is not usually at a loss for something to write to the future husband,' I remarked.

"'Indeed?' she asked, absently. 'Yes, it may be, but I--I find it so stupid just to drag out variations of the theme, "I love you."'

"'Klaus has written you, no doubt, Susanna, that you are to be published from the pulpit on Sunday?'

"She started, and stared at me with wide-open, awestruck eyes. 'I don't know,' she stammered, 'I----'

"'But you must know what is in his letter,' I said, impatiently.

"'Yes, I--' She put her hand in her pocket and drew out a letter. 'I haven't read it yet; I was going to this evening--but----'

"'You have not opened the letter yet?' I cried, quite beside myself.

'Well, I must say, this case is unparalleled! You complain of _ennui_, and yet carry quietly about in your pocket the most interesting thing that can exist for you! The variations on the familiar theme do, indeed, seem tiresome to you, Susanna!'

"I had spoken bitterly and loud. Susanna remained silent, and the same choking feeling of fear came over me as yesterday. I heard the girl sob gently, and was sorry at once for my vehemence.

"'Susanna,' said I, softly, 'you are standing before a very serious turn in your life, and you trifle along like a child!'

"She suddenly broke out in loud weeping. 'What can I do, then?' she cried, wringing her hands. 'Have I not a will of my own? must I be treated like a child?' And the pa.s.sionate little creature flung herself on the floor and embraced my knees. 'Have pity on me, dear, dear Fraulein Rosamond. Do not let me be unhappy. I----'

"She got no further; the door opened, and the sound of Anna Maria's voice came in, so constrained, so forbidding, that my heart stopped beating, and the girl sprang up hastily from the floor.

"'Aunt Rosamond, Susanna--Baron Sturmer wishes to--say farewell to you.'

"I can see them all so plainly as they were at that moment: Anna Maria, pale to her lips, holding firmly on to the back of a chair for support; Sturmer beside her, his eyes fixed on Susanna; behind them Brockelmann with the lamp, and the trembling, sobbing girl, clinging to me, a troubled expression on her tear-stained face, and her great eyes unintelligently returning the man's look.

"At the first moment all was not clear to me; I did not understand how Sturmer had come to Anna Maria, but that a deep wound had been made in a young human heart, that I saw, and an icy chill crept over me.

"'Anna Maria,' I stammered, and sought to free myself from Susanna's arms. Then Sturmer came up to me.

"'I am going away to-morrow for a long time, Fraulein Rosamond,' said he, in a firm, clear voice, 'and want to take my leave of you. It is a hasty decision of mine, but you know that is my way. I thank you, too, for the letter, Fraulein Rosamond.' He kissed my hand and turned to Susanna. There was a tremble on his lips, as with a formal bow, he expressed a brief congratulation on her engagement.

"She looked fixedly at him, as if she did not understand him, her arms slipped from my waist, and she made a movement toward him; but he had already turned away. He bent again over Anna Maria's hand and left the room. I can still hear the closing of the door and his reechoing steps in the hall, and can still see the vacant expression with which Anna Maria looked after him. She was standing, drawn to her full height, her proud head slightly bent, yet she seemed inwardly broken, and a ghastly smile lay on her firmly closed lips.

"'Anna Maria!' I cried, hastening over to her. She did not look at me, but pointed to Susanna, who had slipped, fainting, to the floor.

"'Her!' she said, lifelessly--' he loves _her_!--both love _her_! And I?' She pa.s.sed her hands over her forehead. 'Nothing more, aunt, nothing more, in the great wide world; nothing more!'

"She bent down to the unconscious girl and raised her in her arms, and the beautiful head with the dark curls rested on her breast. Anna Maria looked for an instant at the pale, childish face, and then carried her over to her room and laid her on the bed.

"'Take care of Susanna,' said she to Isabella, who stood before the bed, wringing her hands. 'If it is necessary, send for the doctor.' She went past me out of the room; I hurried after her; what did I care for Susanna at this moment?

"'Anna Maria,' I begged, 'where are you going? Come into my room, speak out, have your cry out; do not stay alone, my poor, dear child!'

"She stood still. 'I do not know what I should have to speak about, aunt--and cry? I cannot cry. Don't worry about me; nothing pains me, nothing at all. I would like to be alone, I must think about myself. Do let me.'

"She went away with as firm a step as ever; she even turned down a smoking lamp in pa.s.sing, and the sound of her deep, pleasant voice came up to me from the stairs as she spoke to Brockelmann; then I heard her steps die away in the hall.

"What sort of storm may have shaken her in her solitary room I know not.

When, late in the evening, I listened at her door there was no sound of movement within; but that she watched through the saddest hours of her life in that night, her pale face, her sunken eyes, and the expression about the corners of her mouth told me the next day.

"Ah, and over it all lay, like a veil, that old coldness, and her fair head was poised just as obstinately as before, and her words had an imperious sound. Anna Maria was not desperate, Anna Maria had no pa.s.sionate complaints to make. With her maidenly pride she had subdued the sick heart; no one saw, now, that it was mortally wounded. The pain within, the struggles, they were _her_ affair. Who would dare even to touch that closed, strongly guarded door?

"And so the next morning she went up to the bed in Susanna's room, where the sobbing girl lay. Susanna had begun to cry on regaining consciousness the day before, and kept on crying, as if she would dissolve in tears. Isabella sat by the bed, with a red face; she had doubtless talked herself hoa.r.s.e with consolatory arguments during the night; now she was silent and feigned ignorance of all that had pa.s.sed.

'I don't know, Fraulein Anna Maria,' she whispered, 'what is the matter with Susanna--these unfortunate nerves; I don't understand it!' She looked very much cast down, the little yellow woman.

"'Susanna,' said Anna Maria, clearly and severely, 'stop crying, and tell me the cause of your trouble; perhaps I can help you.'

"'Oh, heavens! no, no!' screamed Isa, vehemently, pressing close up to Anna Maria. 'She is so excited; don't listen to her words, she doesn't know what she is saying!'

"But Susanna made no answer; she stopped sobbing, turned her head away from Anna Maria, and lay still as a mouse; but in the quick rising and falling of her bosom one could see how excited she was.

"'Be calm, Susanna,' repeated Anna Maria; 'and where you are, I have to speak with you concerning the explanation of a great mistake.'

"She turned quietly from the invalid, and observing the gla.s.ses beside the bed, asked Isabella if Susanna liked lemonade, and went away. She had given me only a hasty greeting; now she came back, and we stood together in the hall, and I held her hand in mine.

"That words of consolation were not to be thought of in dealing with a nature like Anna Maria's, I knew well; yet I could not help tears coming into my eyes as I looked at her. She looked at me for a moment, her face quivered as with a pa.s.sionate pain, and the sobbing sound came from her breast. But she composed herself by an effort, and pointing to Susanna's door, said: 'There is the worst thing--my poor Klaus!' She pressed my hand, and then went about her household duties as usual. It is not every one that would have done as she did!

"When I entered Susanna's room again I found her sitting up in bed, wringing her clasped hands. 'n.o.body has asked _me_ about it!' she repeated, amid streaming tears; 'my wish is of no account; they have pushed me away where they wanted me to go! And now, now--' She murmured something to herself, which I did not understand, and stopped weeping, only to begin anew with the pa.s.sionate cry: 'No one loves me, no one!'

"'Do not listen to her,' Isabella implored me; 'she really does not know what she is doing; leave me alone with her! 'The little creature was in a thousand terrors. She ran from the bed to the window, and then back to the bed; she called the weeping girl all sorts of pet names, she besought her by heaven and earth to be quiet--it was in vain. Susanna wept herself into a state of agitation that made us fear the worst; she struck at Isa, and then wrung her hands again, like a person in perfect desperation. I stood by, helpless; as long as the girl was in this state of excitement I could not step up to her, and say: 'Susanna, what have you done? You have given your word to a man of honor, and you love another! You have made mischief in the house which was so hospitably opened to you; you have made three human hearts miserable! Is that your grat.i.tude for all this kindness?'

"And then her cry, 'No one asked me; they pushed me away where they wanted me to be, and I had not the power to defend myself!' sank deeply into my heart, and my thoughts went back to that evening when she had run away in the storm and rain, and how Klaus had brought her back, and called her 'his!' Had he asked if she loved him? No; he had not even thought of the possibility that such might not be the case; he had gone away with firm confidence in her love. And then Anna Maria had pressed her to her heart one day, and called her 'sister,' and Klaus had come, and had put the engagement ring on her hand. She had not dared to send him away, and had gone on, in her light manner, trifling with that engagement ring, while becoming deeper and deeper involved in the pa.s.sion for another. Her lover was away, he did not hear her. Now Sturmer was going into the wide world, a fresh thorn in her heart.

Susanna was shaken out of her dreams, and near despair. And Anna Maria, and Klaus--what was to become of them?

"Then Brockelmann brought me a letter from Sturmer. I went into my room and read it; it was written from Dambitz, and ran as follows:

"'HONORED FRaULEIN:--I do not like to go away from you without a word of explanation, or without thanking you for your letter, which kept me from taking a step which would have been painfully hard for me in more than one respect. You have, with delicate tact indeed, rightly discerned that Susanna Mattoni is not an object of indifference to me, and you wanted to save me from a disappointment. My dear Fraulein Rosamond, why should I deny it? I love Susanna very much, and I intended yesterday to beg for your mediation in my suit. I _had_ to suppose that she returned my love.