Читать книгу Only a Girl: or, A Physician for the Soul - Wilhelmine von Hillern - Страница 12

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The next day, at about the same hour, Frau Bertha was in her kitchen, beating whites of eggs for a cake, her round cheeks shaking merrily with the exercise. She had sent her maid into the garden with Gretchen, and was supplying the maid's place. She turned the bowl upside down, to convince herself that the eggs were sufficiently beaten; not a drop fell,--they were all right. She set them aside with an air of great satisfaction, and turned to a bag beneath the table, whence issued a melancholy flapping and cooing. A white dove poked its head out of the mouth of the bag, and Bertha thrust it back again, securing the opening more tightly. A pot of water on the fire boiled over with a loud hissing, and she hastened to roll up her sleeves over her large, well-formed arms, and lift the heavy vessel from the glowing coals. She was a beautiful sight, as the glare from the fire illuminated her massive proportions; as she moved hither and thither, now arranging her various cooking-utensils, now opening the door beneath the oven, to thrust in huge pieces of wood, hastily picking up and tossing back the bits of burning coal that fell out, she might have been Frau Venus, the coarse Frau Venus of the popular German imagination, fresh from the infernal regions in the Hörselberg, who, clad in a kitchen apron, was here in the likeness of a cook-maid to seduce the calm, cold-blooded Dr. Gleissert by the magic charms of her cookery. She tossed a net full of crabs into a pot of cold water, and looked thoughtlessly on at their slow death over the fire. She never dreamed that just at that moment a human life was leaving its mortal tenement beneath her roof, and when, a few minutes later, she was pounding ingredients in her huge mortar, that the noise she was making was the death-knell of a departing soul. She did not hear her husband's approach until he stood before her, and seizing her by the arm, said breathlessly, "Wife, this is our last day of torment!"

Frau Bertha looked at him with surprise, that was only half joy, painted upon her heated face. "I have never seen you so delighted before, except when you were examining those odd fishes at Trieste; what has happened?"

"Can you not guess?" asked Leuthold.

"Is he dead?"

"He is; he has been dying for the last twenty-four hours."

"Thank Heaven!" said Frau Bertha, folding her plump hands.

"And if I believed in Heaven I should say so too," rejoined Leuthold, throwing himself upon a kitchen chair. "Only conceive of the joy! We are wealthy,--independent,--delivered from our ten years' servitude,--delivered--ah!" He fanned himself with the pocket-handkerchief that he had just used at the bedside of Hartwich's corpse to dry the tears that he did not shed.

In spite of her good fortune, Frau Bertha looked uncomfortable. "I am almost sorry he has gone," she said timidly. "It seems to me a sin to rejoice so at any one's death,--he might appear to us."

"Don't talk such nonsense; you know I cannot endure it," said Leuthold angrily. "You behave as if we had killed him. Wishes are neither poison nor steel; and we are not rejoicing at his death, but at our inheritance. It is but human."

"Yes, yes," said Bertha, comforted, "you are quite right. If we could have had the money while he lived, we should not have wanted him to die; he might have lived for a hundred years for all I would have cared. It was his own fault that we wished him dead. Why did he keep us so pinched?"

Leuthold nodded approvingly. "I see you are willing to listen to reason; now have the kindness to come downstairs with me and pay the proper respect to the body."

"What must I do that for?" asked Bertha, alarmed.

"Because it is becoming! I have instructed you sufficiently upon this point; you know my wishes--come!"

These words, that cut like a knife in their utterance, made opposition useless. Bertha took her casseroles from the fire, looked after the doves in the bag, and followed her husband down stairs. On the way she asked him, "What shall I say when we get there?"

"Not much," said Leuthold dryly. "There is not much to be said in such stiff, silent society,--a couple of oh's and ah's will suffice; it is very graceful in a woman to fall upon her knees by the bedside; but if you should attempt it, pray restrain your usual impetuosity, or the repose even of the dead might be disturbed."

"You are a fearful man," whispered Bertha. "I am actually afraid of you. Will you make such joking speeches when I die?"

"I shall not outlive you, my good Bertha," said Leuthold, plaintively. "If I should, be assured I will mourn for you as the nurseling for his nurse!"

Frau Bertha looked doubtfully at her husband. She scarcely knew what to make of this tender asseveration, and she said nothing. They had reached the door of Hartwich's apartment.

"Where is your handkerchief--your pocket-handkerchief?" Leuthold asked softly. Bertha sought it in vain; she had forgotten it. "How thoughtless," whispered Leuthold, "to forget your handkerchief under such circumstances!"

"Then give me yours," said Bertha.

"You fool! I want it for myself. Take your apron; put that up to your eyes--so!" With these words he opened the door and entered slowly, pushing Bertha before him. Hartwich lay extended upon the bed, his face so changed that Bertha was glad to be able to hide her eyes in her apron. Leuthold stood beside her, a picture of dignified manly grief; his bearing impressed the bystanders; the surgeon, the men- and maid-servants, who were all present, were convinced that Herr Gleissert had really loved his step-brother, and that it was rank injustice to accuse him of heartlessness. After a few moments, he laid his hand gently upon his wife's shoulder, but its stern pressure reminded her that she was to fall upon her knees. She sank down as carefully as she could, and with her broad back and bending head was a beautiful and moving image of woe. After awhile he bent over her and said gently, "Come, my child, do not be so agitated; our tears cannot bring him back to life--come!" Then he raised her, leaned her head upon his breast to conceal her face, and conducted her from the room. The others looked after them with amazement.

"I cannot understand it," said the surgeon. "Every one knows that the woman never could endure Herr von Hartwich, and yet now she seems almost dead with grief!"

"She isn't really sorry," growled a groom; "it's all sham!"

"Yes, yes," Rieka added, "she didn't shed a tear,--not a single tear, for all she rubbed her eyes so with her apron!"

"That's true,--she is right," murmured the group; "neither he nor she shed a single tear. Well, there's a pair of them. Do they suppose we are so stupid as not to see how glad they are that the master is dead? 'Tis a pity that the money will not fall into better hands."

Then they separated, and went indifferently about their work.

"That was not so bad," said Leuthold, when he had reached his own room with Bertha; "but still you certainly have no genius for the stage."

"You ought to be glad that I can never play a part before you," she said, shaking herself as if to shake off the disagreeable impression of what she had seen like dust from her clothes.

In the mean time the maid had brought the child in from the garden, and had laid the table.

"We will have some champagne to-day," said Leuthold, taking down the keys of the cellar. "We need something to support us under such exciting circumstances. Send Lena for some ice." And he left the room.

Frau Bertha sent the girl for ice, and said to herself with complacency, "That ice-house was the best thing I ever planned."

The little girl, who was too fat and chubby to move very steadily, had crept under the table, and now, catching hold of the corner of the table-cloth, tried to lift herself by it, thereby pulling down a couple of plates and knives upon the floor. Bertha caught up the screaming child, gave it two or three hard slaps, saying, "Now you know what you are crying for," and then carried it to and fro to quiet it, well knowing that her strict husband would not endure any noise. Gretchen ceased crying just as her father entered with the champagne. Lena brought the ice, and the bottles were arranged in it. When the husband and wife were seated at table, Bertha had the fragments of the broken plates cleared away. "Oh, heavens!" she muttered, "nothing but bad signs. If our fortune should be destroyed like that china!"

"You unmitigated fool!" scolded her husband; "if everything that we desire were only as secure as our legally devised inheritance, Gretchen's future husband would be now tumbling about in a royal nursery, and there would be a French cook in our kitchen."

"Oh, then," Bertha interrupted him with irritation, "you are not satisfied with my cooking,--you want a Frenchman."

"Only a Frenchman could supply your place," replied her husband, quite ready to practise himself in the delicate flattery which he intended to make use of in future towards ladies in aristocratic circles. He kissed her hand and said, "I would not have these rosy fingers any longer degraded by contact with the rude utensils of cookery. Let all that be left to the hard, rough hands of some skilful gastronome."

Frau Bertha stared at him in surprise.

"Why, can gastronomes cook?"

"Most certainly,--what else should they do?"

"I thought they looked at the stars through glasses!"

Leuthold clasped his hands in dismay, and cast a look towards heaven. "Good heavens! when I think of your making such a speech among our future friends, I am so profoundly humiliated that I could almost determine to make over my property to some religious institution--some monastery--and enroll myself among its members. Woman, woman, must I teach you the difference between gastronomy, the science of cookery, and astronomy, the science of the stars?"

"Gastronomy or astronomy!" said Bertha pettishly, as she ladled out the soup, "it is a great deal better for me to understand cooking than the long names you call it. Would you have liked, during all the ten years that you were too poor to keep a regular cook, to have a wife who could talk Latin with you, but whose dinners a dog could not have eaten?"

"No, no, indeed, my dear Bertha!" said her husband with a shudder; "but the two can be united if you try. I do not ask you either to study Greek and Latin, or to resign your masterly supervision of our kitchen department; but you have hitherto performed many little household offices, that could as well have been left to the servant, because you had no pleasanter way of occupying your time. This must be otherwise now; hitherto you have had the excuse of our straitened circumstances that have compelled you sometimes to discharge a servant's duties. Now there will be no such excuse; for you will have a suitable household in town, and time to cultivate your mind and render yourself a worthy member of the society to which I shall introduce you."

Bertha in her impatience let her spoon fall into the soup-plate, and then wreaked her irritation upon the soup, which she poured hastily back into the tureen.

"If you should do such a thing as that before strangers," said her husband angrily, "you would stamp yourself as a person of no refinement, and I should be disgraced."

Bertha brought her hand down upon the table so heavily that the glasses rang again. "This is really too much! Can I no longer eat as I please? As long as you were poor, and I spent my little all in procuring delicacies for you, you found me all very well, and had plenty of fine words for me; but now, that you are rich and I have nothing left, I am not good enough for you, and you take quite another tone with me. Heaven help me! There is no more pleasure in store for me. I really believe you would send me out of the house if I should not succeed in pleasing you. Oh, if I had only known!"

She was silent, because Lena appeared with the roast; but a couple of large tears dropped into the soup-plate which she handed to the servant.

"What exaggerated nonsense!" said Leuthold at last. "Be good enough to carve the meat,--I am hungry. You know I am a respectable man,--slow to adopt harsh measures if they can be avoided. I hope you will not force me to them by stubborn conduct. You will recognize and fulfil the duties which our wealth imposes upon us."

"Duties, duties? I thought that when I was rich I could begin really to enjoy life and do as I pleased; but instead of that I must wear a double face and worry about everything. It is just as if you gave me a new sofa in the place of the old one, but forbade me to lie down upon it for fear of injuring the cover. Of course I should long for the old one, upon which I could stretch myself in comfort whenever I chose."

Leuthold smiled. "You are not forbidden to lie down upon the new sofa. I only ask you to take off your muddy boots when you do so. Do you understand?"

Bertha was so far consoled that she applied herself to devouring the food upon her plate in silence. Her husband regarded her with a strange mixture of humour and discontent.

"You must at least learn to hold your fork in your left hand," he said at last.

"Mercy!" exclaimed Bertha again. "What matter is it about such a trifle?"

"A great deal of matter, my dear. Such trifles show refinement, just as the mercury in the thermometer shows the degree of heat and cold. If you lay your knife aside and clutch your fork in your right hand like a pitchfork, every one of any culture will say, 'That woman is a person of no refinement. She has not been used to good society.' I grant it is insignificant in itself and ridiculous to every thinking man; but it serves a certain purpose. Such forms are marks of distinction between cultivated and uncultivated people. Just because they are so insignificant the uninitiated never pay any heed to them. But, although clad in purple and fine linen, ignorance of such trifles betrays the parvenu. Those who desire, like yourself, to enter circles to which they do not belong by birth, must find out all their conventional secrets, in order not to be disgraced."

"Oh, what a moral discourse!" sighed Bertha. "I have had enough for to-day. You are a thoroughly heartless man, and were kind to me only as long as you needed me. I must bear what comes, for I am poor and helpless since I broke with my father,--but you have tired me out, I assure you."

"And if this fatigue were an overpowering sensation, you would separate yourself from me; but since you are fond of the rest that I can provide you, there will be an enduring bond between us. I shall magnanimously treat you as my wife as long as you give me no legal ground for divorce; therefore, be composed; your future lot is a thousand times more brilliant than you had any right to expect."

Bertha arose, and was about to reply, but her husband commanded silence by so imperious a gesture that she swallowed down her anger and hastened from the room, sobbing violently. In the kitchen the maid was just taking the cake that she had made from the oven. It was successful--it was most beautiful! The servant placed it near the open window to cool. Bertha contemplated it mournfully. How much pains she had taken! how stiff the eggs had been beaten! how well it had risen! and no one cared anything about it! Did her cross husband deserve that she should prepare such a delicacy for him? Should he devour this masterpiece? Yet there it was,--so round and high, so brown and fragrant, that she gradually dried her tears, and was filled with more agreeable sensations and a pardonable pride. No one except herself possessed the receipt for this cake. No one else could make it. She thought with rapture of the delight of those who should in future partake of it at her table,--of the consideration that she should enjoy on account of it; and, thinking thus, her good humour returned, and she determined not to hide her light under a bushel, and punish her husband by withholding the cake from him, but to parade it before him; he should see what a woman he had treated so unkindly could do. When he tasted this cake he would repent his harshness! She took the plate and carried it on high into the dining-room, where she placed it before her husband with exultation.

"Yes, that is really beautiful," he said approvingly, looking first at the round, beautiful cake, and then at the plump, pretty baker; and his approbation exalted Bertha to the highest pitch of satisfaction, so that she felt morally justified in asking for a glass of champagne. Her husband removed the cork without allowing it to snap and disturb the decorum of the house of mourning, and then poured out a sparkling bumper for her.

"Come," she said, "we will clink glasses, and drink to the welfare of the good Hartwich, who has made us rich!"

"Yes, now that he is dead, may he live forever," said Leuthold smiling, and gently touching his wife's glass with his own,--"live forever in that heaven where I trust he may experience all the delight that his wealth will afford us here on earth."

They emptied their glasses, and Bertha ran into the adjoining room, where Gretchen was taking her noonday nap. She snatched the sleeping child from the bed, shook it, and cried, "Come, wake up, and you shall have some cake!"

The little thing, interrupted in its nap, was frightened and began to scream, refusing to be quieted until her father filled her mouth with the promised delicacy and dandled her in his arms.

"You do not even understand how to take care of your own child," murmured Leuthold. "What will you do when our niece comes to us?"

"What!" cried Bertha, "must I have the care of the disagreeable creature?"

"She will come to me--yes."

"But we will send her to boarding-school--you promised me!"

"If Ernestine recovers, as she may do under old Heim's care, she will be too weak for months to be sent among strangers without incurring the reproach of the world. You will be obliged, therefore, to submit to having her with us until such time as we can be rid of her decently. I assure you she shall stay no longer than is absolutely necessary. And now pray be quiet, and do not embitter this day by complaints."

Frau Bertha looked utterly discomfited. She determined that, at all events, Ernestine should never partake of the delicacies which she alone knew how to prepare. Coarse natures always seek for a scape-goat upon whom to wreak their irritation; and, as she did not dare to make her husband serve this purpose, her choice fell upon Ernestine.

Leuthold, who was not used to see his wife lost in a reverie, softly touched her shoulder. "Come; it really looks almost as if you were thinking of something," he said dryly.

"Yes; I am thinking of something," she replied significantly. "I am thinking of the dog's life I shall lead as long as that sickly, ailing brat is under our roof, and no one will reward me for my pains."

She stopped, for Gretchen had grown restless, and required all her attention, and Leuthold evidently refused to give any heed to her complaints, but, as dinner was over, folded his napkin and rose from the table. "I must write the notice of his death--it is high time it were attended to," he said, while he washed his hands in the adjoining room. "Sew a piece of crape around my hat." He re-entered the room, and sat down at his writing-table. Bertha placed a candle and a cup of café noir upon it. He lighted a cigar, which he smoked as he wrote, sipping his coffee comfortably from time to time. The servant removed the dinner-table; Gretchen amused herself on the floor with some paper, which she tore into a thousand fragments, to make a mimic snow-storm; and Bertha tried on before the mirror several articles of mourning-apparel, which she had had in readiness for some time. She was delighted, for black was very becoming to her.

Peace and comfort reigned in the apartment. Leuthold emptied his cup and laid aside his pen. "There--that is most touching and suitable. Read it." He handed Bertha what he had, written, and she read:

"It has pleased Almighty God to release our beloved father, brother, and brother-in-law, Herr Carl Emil von Hartwich, landholder and manufacturer, from his protracted sufferings, and to transport him to a better world. He died this day, at twelve M. Those who were acquainted with the deceased, and with his active benevolence, will know how profound must be our sorrow, and accord us their sympathy.

"The Sad Survivors.

"Unkenbeim, 24 July, 18--."