A Sister's Love Part 33

"Klaus wrote again, several times, to Anna Maria. She would carry a letter from him about with her all day, unopened, then occasionally tear it open, and begin to read, only to throw it into the fire before she had half finished. Later these letters to Anna Maria were discontinued.

The old bailiff appeared now and then in the sitting-room, to tell her that the master had written him, and wished this and that, thus and so.

Anna Maria would usually nod her head silently, and the man would stand, embarra.s.sed, at the door a little while, and then go quietly away again.

"'Things are not as they ought to be any longer,' he declared to me.

'Formerly the Fraulein used to concern herself about every trifle, so that I often cursed her zeal; to-day anything may happen that will, it is all the same to her; and even if all the barns and granaries should burn down in the night, she would not stir.'

"It was true, Anna Maria no longer asked about anything; she seemed to have sunk into a regular apathy. It was a grief to see this young creature, from whom everything on which her heart was fixed was taken, and who now, without check or purpose, in the most tormenting pain of soul, shut her eyes and ears in dark defiance.

"'Diversion!' said the doctor.

"I looked at him in astonishment. 'I beg you, you have known the girl since her childhood, have you ever known a time when trifles and nonsense could give her pleasure, or could divert her at all from a sorrow?'

"'Nonsense!' replied the old man, 'but she is only a woman. She ought to marry, then everything would be different! It would be a pity if that girl should become a dried-up old maid.'

"I shook my head sadly.

"'Why the devil is she so unreasonable, too, as to fret about her brother's marriage?' he continued, undisturbed. No gray hair need be made grow over that. Take the young lady, pack her trunk, and go to Berlin for a few weeks. Go to the theatre every evening for my sake, and see something cla.s.sical; but take her away from here!'

"'Ah, doctor, you do not know Anna Maria.'

"I made an attempt, nevertheless. She let me have my say, and then said: 'I do not understand the outside world at all. I miss nothing here, I complain of nothing. Do not tease me any more!'

"When the workmen appeared, one after another, to put in order the rooms for the young couple, when the dear old articles of furniture were taken out and the wall-papers torn off, she fled to her room. The writing-desk at which her father had formerly sat and worked was to remain in its place, at Klaus's express desire; but the old thing looked so ridiculously awkward beside the _Boule_ furniture that paper-hanger and cabinet-maker refused to receive it, so Anna Maria had it taken into her room. She now sat there all day at the window before her mother's sewing-table, and looked blankly out on the wintry garden, every stroke of the hammer from the workmen making her start. The bunch of keys no longer hung at her belt; Brockelmann had taken charge of that.

"No one came to see us in those desolate winter days, except the old brother and sister from the parsonage, and even from them she fled. I stood by her faithfully, and beheld the struggles of her proud heart.

"At first Isa had lived on quietly up-stairs by herself, disregarded by Anna Maria. Then one day toward Christmas she came into my room, beaming with joy, and announced to me that the young Frau wanted her to come to her; she was in need of her help at her toilet, and she was to have the position of lady's maid with her. '_Je vais a Paris ce soir, a Paris_, and from there to Nice. Oh, I speak French excellently!'

"I wished her a prosperous journey, and commissioned her with messages.

Then I sat down and reflected. Klaus, quiet, easy-going Klaus, who valued the comfort of his arm-chair in the evening beyond everything, in Paris, the gay Paris, with a young wife who needed a maid to make her toilet? I could not make that rhyme without a dissonance.

"In the rooms down-stairs an exquisite elegance was being gradually revealed, and I learned from the workmen that the pale blue silk hangings of the boudoir (the little library next to Klaus's study was converted into a boudoir), and the dainty rosewood furniture, Frau von Hegewitz had chosen herself in Berlin; that the crimson silk drapery for the salon cost ten _thaler_ a yard, and that the Smyrna rug in there was real. Tears came into my eyes. What had become of our dear old, comfortable sitting-room? What had we ever known of salons and boudoirs at Butze?

"As in pa.s.sing through the garden-parlor one day Anna Maria's feet sank in a Persian rug, and she perceived the low divans which ran along the sides of the room, and the gold-embroidered cus.h.i.+ons; and as she caught sight of a gleaming, gay mosaic floor on the terrace instead of the honest stone flags over which her childish feet had so often tripped, on which she had stood so many a time beside Klaus; and saw, instead of the gray stone bal.u.s.trade, a gilded railing, a slight tremble came upon her lips, and a few great tear-drops ran down her cheeks, and she slowly turned her back to the room. She always went to the garden through the lower entry afterward.

"It was on a stormy evening in March that Anna Maria for the first time broke her long, habitually sober silence. I had not seen her all day; her door remained closed to my knocking. And yet I would have so gladly said a few affectionate words to her--to-day was her birthday.

"In vain had Brockelmann made the huge pound-cake wreathed with the first snow-drops, and in vain placed a couple of blooming hyacinths on the breakfast-table. The door of Anna Maria's room had not been opened.

A letter addressed to me had come from Klaus, requesting me to give to his sister the enclosed open letter. It was affectionately written, begging that she would soften her heart, and requesting a few lines from her hand. 'What sort of a home-coming will it be for Susanna and me,' he wrote, 'if the unhappy misunderstanding is not forgotten? We are ready to consider all as not having happened, if you will come to meet us in the old love. Be friendly to Susanna, too. I can honestly confess to you that I long to be at home, in our dear old house, regularly employed. A life like this here is nothing to me; I always hated idleness. Susanna's health, so far as temporary demands are made upon it, is satisfactory; but for her, too, I wish, especially now, the quiet of the less exciting life at home. Let me once more add to the heartiest wishes for your welfare the desire that we may soon meet again in the old fraternal love.' A dainty visiting-card, 'Susanna, Baroness von Hegewitz,' with a lightly scribbled wish for happiness, lay with the letter.

"In his letter to me Klaus repeated that he was longing for home, that he earnestly besought me to induce Anna Maria to be gentle, for he made his home-coming especially dependent upon her state of mind, as he could not possibly expose Susanna now to excitement and unfriendly treatment.

But he cherished a strong desire to return at the beginning of spring at the latest, for this and other reasons.

"The two letters lay before me on the table; how should I make their contents known to Anna Maria? For she read no letters at all. And how would she receive the news of his return? A change in her feelings was not to be hoped for so soon, not even at the announcement of this glad news.

"Brockelmann had come in and complained, with a shake of her head, that Anna Maria had not eaten a mouthful to-day, and it was four o'clock already. 'She is growing old before her time,' added the old woman; 'does she look now as if she were under thirty? Yesterday I brushed her hair and found two long silvery threads in it. O Lord! and so young!'

"In the depth of twilight Anna Maria came suddenly into the room. She did not say 'Good evening' at all, but only, 'Please do not allude to my birthday, aunt!' And after a pause she added: 'Things cannot remain as they are here; Klaus will want to come home, and then there will be one too many in Butze. I have been considering lately how I should manage not to be in his way, and have at last decided to go at once to the convent in B----.'

"'You would grieve Klaus to death, Anna Maria,' said I; 'it does not do to carry a thing too far. You are both defiant, you are both stubborn, but Klaus has been the first to extend his hand, and he still offers it.

Here, read his letter, read it just this once, and be of a different mind.'

"I lit a candle, and pressed the letter into her hand; and she really read it. A slight blush rose to her pale face, then she nodded her head seriously. 'Believe me,' she said, 'he will really be best pleased if he does not find me here. Write him that, aunt. In this way no possible conflict can ensue.'

"'Anna Maria, you would--you could really go away from here?' cried I, pained. 'How can it be possible? Truly I had expected more feeling, more attachment in you. You can be heartless sometimes!'

"She was silent. 'Sturmer is coming back next month,' she said at last, in a strangely trembling voice, 'and I would like to be as far away as possible.'

"I sprang up, and threw my arms around her. 'My poor, dear child,' I begged, weeping, 'forgive me!'

"And she went, she really went away! On one of the first days of April, early in the day, the carriage which was to take her away stopped before the front steps.

"Anna Maria went down the steps with me, followed by Brockelmann. She quickly got in, and drew her dark gauze veil over her face. 'Greet Klaus heartily for me,' she whispered to me again; 'all the happiness in the world to him and his wife!'

"Then she was gone, and I went quietly up the steps. It seemed unspeakably strange and lonely here to me all at once. I wandered through the newly furnished rooms; they had all been heated and the windows opened. Comfortable, elegant, very pleasant it looked all about here, as if made expressly for Susanna's beauty; but they were no longer the old Butze rooms, with their ancestral comfort, their dear a.s.sociations. I stood now in Susanna's little boudoir; I noticed a fold of the pale blue portiere yonder hanging, out of order, over an indistinguishable object--the upholsterer surely had not intended it so.

I went over and lifted up the heavy silk to lay it again in regular folds on the carpet, when my eye fell upon a little old wooden cradle, painted with a crest, and oddly curved, strangely contrasting, in its rude form, with the elegant appointments of the room; and gently rocking in it were s.h.i.+ning white, fine, lace-trimmed pillows, daintily tied with little blue bows; a basket pushed half under the couch of the young wife concealed little clothes of the finest linen, most beautifully sewed, hem-st.i.tched, and trimmed with lace, made as only a skilled hand knows how.

"'Anna Maria,' I said, softly, looking with moist eyes upon the old cradle in which she, in which Klaus had once lain, and which now stood here, a greeting of reconciliation to the heart of the young wife who had robbed her of her peace and happiness.

"Two days later there was a lively stir at Butze. Unfortunately, a bad headache banished me to a sofa in my dark room, so that I could not welcome the young couple on the threshold of their home. But I heard up here the unusual moving about; the bell in the servants' room, which had been formerly so seldom used, rang a regular alarm, and there was such a slamming of doors and rus.h.i.+ng and running about for the first few hours that I had to draw the thickest pillow over my aching head in order to have any quiet.

"Klaus came up to me very soon; he sat down quietly by my bed and pressed my hand.

"'You are glad to be at home again?' I asked kindly. 'How is your little wife?'

"'Thank you,' he replied, 'she is asleep now. I do not know; I must accustom myself to it first; it has been made so different, so strange, with all these alterations. And then'--he was silent--'one misses Anna Maria everywhere,' he added.

"'You incorrigible people, you!' I scolded vexatiously, 'Bend or break, but not yield, and then perish with longing for each other! A silly, stupid set you are!'

"He made no reply to that. 'After three months in the country,' said he, 'I will go and get her. Now it is better that Susanna should remain alone.'

"'You have been living very happily there?' I asked.

"'Oh, Heaven, yes!' he replied. 'The gay life was new to Susanna, and amused her delightfully. Thank G.o.d that we are here! How do you really like the rooms down-stairs?'

"'Well, they are very beautiful, Klaus, without doubt. But if I am to be honest, it was more comfortable before.'

"'Susanna is quite enchanted with them,' he continued. 'But I had a melancholy feeling when I found the sitting-room without the old stove, the great writing-desk, and Anna Maria's spinning-wheel. I really cannot sit in these spider-legged easy-chairs without fear of breaking down.'

He laughed, but it had not a hearty sound.

"'Shall you be able to eat supper with us?' he asked.

"I promised to do so if I were well enough. If you will let me sleep a little longer now, Klaus, I shall be able to come down.' And then he went away.

"Toward evening I was awakened from a light slumber by the ringing of bells again; again I heard doors shutting, and footsteps of people hurrying to and fro. At the first instant I thought of an accident, but then recollected that it had been just so in the afternoon, and made my toilet and went down.

"The first person to step up to me was Mademoiselle Isa. She greeted me very warmly, and with a certain pretentiousness. 'The gracious Frau had drunk a cup of chocolate and was quite well,' she added, as she opened the door of the former sitting-room, which was agreeably lighted by two lamps, and pointed to the drawn-back portiere: 'The gracious Frau is in her boudoir.'

"Indeed, I was curious to see Susanna again as 'gracious Frau,' and limped quickly across to the little room. The soft carpet had deadened the sound of my steps, and I entered the snug little room unperceived.