A Sister's Love Part 34

Susanna was resting on the divan; I saw her beautiful black curls falling over the blue cus.h.i.+ons, a tiny lace cap was half-hidden among them. Her face was turned toward the fire, which, notwithstanding the warm April evening, was burning brightly in the little fire-place.

"'Susanna!' I called softly. She started up, and with a cry of joy fell on my neck. 'Aunt Rosamond, dear aunt!' she cried, and kissed and patted me with the pleasure of a happy child. 'My good Aunt Rosamond!' And she seized my hands and drew me, without letting go, to the sofa. She exercised the same old charm upon me; I had never been able to be angry with her; her grace was irresistible, and took heart and mind prisoner.

"I raised the round chin a little and looked at her. It was the old, sweet, childish face, only still more attractive by reason of a slight pallor and a strange, sad look about the mouth; the eyes had lost the questioning look which sometimes gave them such a peculiar expression, but I thought they had grown larger and more brilliant. She threw her arms about my neck again, and kissed me and laughed, and then came a tear or two, and then she laughed again.

"She chattered about Nice, about Paris, and said she wanted to live here quietly only a little while, and then fell on my neck again and whispered a thanks.

"'No, no!' said I, smiling, 'I am not guilty of that; your thanks belong to Anna Maria.'

"She grew silent and pale. Then she sprang up and drew me into the salon. I had to gaze at a hundred things which she had brought with her--worthless toys, knick-knacks, fans, and all manner of folly, of whose existence I had never dreamed till now, and which struck me as infinitely useless. 'Klaus has had to give me everything, everything,'

she cried, joyfully, 'except this. Aunt, do you see?' She pointed to a charming shepherdess of Sevres porcelain. 'That is a present from Sturmer.'

"I stared at her. 'Have you met him on the way?' She did not return my look, but her face glowed as rosy red as the ribbons on her white dress.

'Yes,' said she lightly, 'we were with him a day in Nice, but he went away in haste, and this is a souvenir.' And then she told me about the sea and the palm-trees, of gondola-sails by moonlight, till her cheeks grew crimson at the recollection.

"'Ah, life is so beautiful, so beautiful!' she cried, 'and--' She broke off, for Klaus entered. He wore a short coat and high boots, and his face was radiant with joy in the long-suspended activity.

"'I have been clattering all over the fields,' said he gayly, 'and am tired as a dog, little wife, and hungry and thirsty. Do you know what would particularly please me?' He pushed the curls from her forehead and kissed her. 'A slice of honest German ham and a good gla.s.s of beer! The French sauces had a miserable after-taste to me, brrr--! Holla! ho!' he called out at the door, 'will supper be ready soon?'

"He did not seem to notice at all that Susanna made a wry face at his declaring it was unnecessary for her to make a fresh toilet for supper, and that she took his arm reluctantly. 'Ah, but we will live here in comfort,' said he beseechingly, holding her two hands over the table, 'not as in a hotel. When we go to Nice again I promise you always to appear in dress-coat. Here I should have no time at all for the continual changing of dress; and as for you, you do not look more charming in any state costume than in that white thing there.'

"She shook her head, laughing, and showed him a little fist. 'Wait,'

said she, 'what did you promise me?'

"'Well, then, in the future,' he persevered; 'but to-day, and to-morrow too, let me enjoy the comfort I have so long done without--do.'

"Susanna smiled; and he ate German ham and drank German beer to his heart's content, while she took a roll spread with something or other, with her tea, which Klaus prepared for her. I saw, in astonishment, how carefully he made the tea, how he heeded her every glance; now attentively pa.s.sed her pepper and salt, and now cut a fresh sausage and roll, or carefully removed bones and tail from a sardine, every instant asking if it tasted good to her, if she were satisfied with her rooms, if she liked the flowers in the salon. He treated her like a little spoiled princess.

"After supper I was going to withdraw; I thought they must be tired from their journey. Susanna had lain down again on her couch; she kissed me once more, and Klaus accompanied me as I went out. I saw that he held a book in his hand. 'Good-night, aunt,' he said, 'I am going to read aloud to Susanna.'

"'For heaven's sake!' I cried, 'you are already yawning privately!'

"'Yes, I am tired to-night,' he replied, 'but Susanna is so accustomed to it; she does not go to sleep before one o'clock.'

"'Klaus, Klaus!' I warned him, 'if she has accustomed herself to it, let her become disused to it. Only think, when you want to rise early in the morning!"

"He heard me not. 'Aunt,' said he, holding me fast by the hand, his eyes s.h.i.+ning so happily, 'is she not a good, charming little wife?'

"I smiled in his face. 'Very charming, Klaus!'

"'And who prophesied to me that I should be unhappy all my life, eh?' he asked.

"'Oh, Klaus, not I, indeed!' I contradicted earnestly. 'If Anna Maria had apprehensions, they were certainly not without foundation, and a housewife Susanna will never be.'

"'No, she is not yet a German housewife,' he broke in, in a somewhat disheartened manner, 'but she can be, and will be yet.'

"I nodded to him: 'Sleep well, Klaus!'

"'Is it not so?' he asked, holding me back.' You will write to Anna Maria that we are happy with one another; you will tell her how good and charming she is?'

"'Yes, my boy, and now, good-night.'

"Anna Maria's letters were brief and meagre; her handwriting very large and angular, as it is to-day. She wrote me that she was very well there, occupied a pair of pretty rooms, and was much with the abbess, who had been a friend of her mother. 'But I miss activity,' she added; 'a life on the sofa, in the company of stocking-knitting and books, is hateful to me; that is not resting.' A greeting for Klaus and Susanna was added.

"I answered her, writing that Klaus wors.h.i.+pped his wife and was happy.

"'May G.o.d keep him thus!' she answered laconically. She was not to be reached with that; she had no belief in a happiness with Susanna.

"Sturmer, who, as Anna Maria thought, was to come in April, was not yet here. He was a migratory bird, only without the regularity of one."

CHAPTER XVIII.

"May came on in the country in all its glory; the trees blossomed and the seeds sprouted, and Butze lay as in a snowy sea. The sun laughed in the sky, as Susanna walked through the trim garden-paths on Klaus's arm.

Now and then I saw her cross the court, with straw hat and parasol, in a light summer dress, and go a little way into the fields to meet him. The people stood still as she pa.s.sed, the women and girls courtesied, the men made as deep a bow to her as to the rest of us from the house, and the children ran up to her in troops, and the sound of their 'Good-day, gracious Frau,' and Susanna's clear, laughing voice came up to me; her charms fairly bewitched everybody. Then she would return on her husband's arm, a great bouquet of field flowers in her hands, he leading his horse by the bridle and carrying her parasol and shawl; and her chatter and his deep voice, calling her a thousand pet names, reechoed from the old walls when they had come into the house.

"If Anna Maria could only have seen them thus, thought I, would she have been reconciled? Poor, lonely Anna Maria!

"Susanna never inquired for her; her stay here seemed to be entirely taken up with all manner of little trifles. Occasionally there came a perfect swarm of guests, and then the sound of laughing and chattering was heard in the garden-parlor till far into the night, and Brockelmann, with a very red face, bustled about at the sideboard.

"'I don't feel my feet at all, any more,' the old woman would sometimes complain; 'I really must have some one else to help me. In old times one used to know it beforehand when there was to be a great supper; but if any one came unexpectedly, he took just what there was in the house and was satisfied. But how should I dare take thinly sliced ham and fresh eggs and a herring salad to the Frau? I tried it once--how she turned up her nose and begged her guests to excuse it! And then the master comes and says: "Good Brockelmann, though it is a little bit late, do get us a couple of warm dishes, and this and that, and a little fowl, for my wife does not like a cold supper when there is company; you must have some asparagus or green peas?" Heavens and earth! And then old Brockelmann is so stupid, too, as to run her heels off and make the impossible possible. Oh dear, oh dear, if Anna Maria knew how my storeroom looks, and my account books!'

"And she put her hands up under her cap and shook her head.

"'You may believe it, Fraulein Rosamond,' she would sometimes add, 'the Frau is well enough yet, at least she doesn't concern herself about me; but the old woman--O Lord! She sticks her nose into everything, and more than a hundred times she has brought her chocolate out to me again--it wasn't hot enough, or was burned, or the Lord knows what! As if the old creature understood anything about it, anyway! Oh, yes, and then, if my patience is utterly exhausted, the master comes into the kitchen. "Good Brockelmann," he says, in his friendly way, "do keep peace with Isa, that my little wife may not be vexed." Well, then I keep still; but I see how he takes to heart everything that concerns his wife. And then I think how loud and angrily he has often spoken to Anna Maria in spite of all his love, and here he even spreads out his hands for the little feet to walk on!'

"Indeed, she had not said too much. He did lay down his hands for the little feet, and they walked on them without particularly noticing it.

Klaus had a boundless love for his wife, and she received this love as a tribute due her. She had no conception of what she possessed in him.

"I do not know if he felt this. Occasionally, when Susanna was asleep, or making her toilet, or gone to a drive, and he had an hour to spare, he would sit with me up in my room, and would look so weary and oppressed. We spoke often, too, of Anna Maria; but when Susanna was present he did not mention her name, for at that a shadow regularly pa.s.sed over her face, and her chattering lips grew silent.

"'My old Anna Maria!' he would say; 'she is still angry with me, and yet she is such a good, reasonable girl.' The last words were unconsciously accented. 'How pleasant it would be if she and Susanna could live together like sisters--the unfortunate stubbornness. Do you suppose, aunt, she will come when the old cradle down-stairs--?' And his eyes grew moist at this thought.

"'I do not know, Klaus, but I think so,' said I, 'if Susanna can only forget--'

"'Ah, aunt, I place my entire hope on the cradle about her, too. Anna Maria shall be G.o.dmother; I will not have it otherwise. Please G.o.d, it may not be far off!'

"And was it then so far off? On a dull, sultry August night, I was still sitting in my easy-chair by the window, and could see distant flashes of lightning over the barns; the air was uncomfortable and stifling, or was it only the imagination of my old, restlessly beating heart, and my thoughts, which were below with Susanna, anxious and prayerful?

"Ah, what does not pa.s.s through one's soul in such an hour--trembling joy and happy fear, and each minute seems to stretch out endlessly. I listened to the walking down-stairs, to the sound of the opening and shutting of doors; would some one never come up with the glad news?

"And my thoughts wandered back to the night when Anna Maria was born, when I sat up here in the same fear and anxiety. Klaus had gone to sleep in the arm-chair over there. I had not disturbed him, had let him sleep, till his father came to call him to his mother's death-bed. The boy's pale, frightened face stood before me so plainly this evening, as he knelt before the cradle of his little sister.

"Below, in the court-yard, it was still as death; only old Mandelt, the watchman, was going slowly along, shaking his rattler; and above the slumbering world glittered the brilliant stars of the August sky as through a light mist.

"Then I started up; heavy steps were approaching my door, and now Brockelmann called into my room: 'A boy, Fraulein Rosamond! Come down-stairs--such a dear, splendid boy!'