Читать книгу On the Cross - Wilhelmine von Hillern - Страница 49

The countess looked at the old man's thin, worn figure, and then at the plump mother and child.

"Who supports them?"

"Oh, we help one another," replied Andreas evasively. "We all work together. My son, the drawing teacher, does a great deal for us, too. We could not manage without him." Then interrupting himself with a startled look, as if he might have been overheard, he added, "but I ought not to have said that--he would be very angry if he knew."

"You appear to be a little afraid of your son," said the countess.

"Yes, yes--he is strict, very strict and proud, but a good son."

The old man's eyes sparkled with love and pride.

"Where is he?" asked the countess eagerly.

"Oh, he never allows strangers to see him if he can avoid it."

"Does he act, too?"

"No; he arranges the tableaux, and it needs the ability of a field marshal, for he is obliged to command two or three hundred people, and he keeps them together and they obey him as though he was a general."

"He must be a very interesting person."

At that moment the prince's step was heard in the sitting-room.

"May I come in?"

"Yes, Prince."

He entered, dripping with rain.

"I found nothing except one little room for myself, in a hut even worse than this. All the large houses are filled to overflowing. Satan himself brought us among these confounded peasants!" he said angrily in French.

"Don't speak so," replied the countess earnestly in the same language. "They are saints." The little girl whispered to her mother.

"Please excuse me, Sir; but my child understands French and has just told me that you could get no room for the lady," said Andreas' daughter timidly. "I know where there is one in a very pretty house near by. I will run over as quickly as I can and see if it is still vacant. If you could secure it you would find it much better than ours." She hurried towards the door.

"Stop, woman," called the prince, "you cannot possibly go out; the rain is pouring in torrents, and another shower is rising."

"Yes, stay," cried the countess, "wait till the storm is over."

"Oh, no! lodgings are being taken every minute, we must not lose an instant." The next moment she threw a shawl over her head and left the house. She was just running past the low window--a vivid flash of lightning illumined the room, making the little bent figure stand forth like a silhouette. A peal of thunder quickly followed.

"The storm is just over us," said the prince with kindly anxiety. "We ought not to have let her go."

"Oh, it is of no consequence," said the old man smiling, "she is glad to do it."

"Tell me about these strange people," the prince began, but the countess motioned to him that the child understood French. He looked at her with a comical expression as if he wanted to say: "These are queer 'natives' who give their children so good an education."

The countess went to the window, gazing uneasily at the raging storm. A feeling of self-reproach stole into her heart for having let the kind creature go out amid this uproar of the elements. Especially when these people would take no compensation and therefore lost a profit, if another lodging was found.

It was her loss, and yet she showed this cheerful alacrity.

The little party had now entered the living room. The countess sat on the window sill, while flash after flash of lightning blazed, and peal after peal crashed from the sky. She no longer thought of herself, only of the poor woman outside. The little girl wept softly over her poor mother's exposure to the storm, and slipped to the door to wait for her. The prince, shivering, sat on the bench by the stove. Gross, noticing it, put on more fuel "that the gentleman might dry himself." A bright fire was soon crackling in the huge green stove, the main support of the sunken ceiling.

"Pray charge the fuel to me," said the prince, ashamed.

The old man smiled.

"How you gentle-folks want to pay for everything. We should have needed a fire ourselves." With these words he left the room. The thin sister now thought it desirable not to disturb the strangers and also went out.

"Tell me, Countess," the prince began, leaning comfortably against the warm stove, "may I perfume this, by no means agreeable, atmosphere with a cigarette?"

"Certainly, I had forgotten that there were such things as cigarettes in the world."

"So it seems to me," said the prince, coolly. "Tell me, chère amie, now that you have duly enjoyed all the tremors of this romantic situation, how should you like a cup of tea?"

"Tea?" said the countess, looking at him as if just roused from a dream, "tea!"

"Yes, tea," persisted the prince. "My poor friend, you must have lived an eternity in this one hour among these 'savages' to have already lost the memory of one of the best products of civilization."

"Tea," repeated the countess, who now realized her exhaustion, "that would be refreshing, but I don't know how to get it, I sent the maid away."

"Yes, I met the dismissed couple in a state of utter despair. And I can imagine that my worshipped Countess Madeleine--the most pampered and spoiled of all the children of fortune and the fashionable world--does not know how to help herself. I am by no means sorry, for I shall profit by it. I can now pose as a kind Providence. What good luck for a lover! is it not? So permit me to supply the maid's place--so far as this is practicable. I have tea with me and my valet whom, thank Heaven, I was not obliged to send away, is waiting your order to serve it."

"How kind you are, Prince. But consider that kitchen filled with flies."

"Oh, you need not feel uncomfortable on that score. You are evidently unused to the mountains. I know these flies, they are different from our city ones and possess a peculiar skill in keeping out of food. Try it for once."

"Yes, but we must first ascertain whether I can get the other room," said the countess, again lapsing into despondency.

"My dearest Countess, does that prevent our taking any refreshment? Don't be so spiritless," said the prince laughing.

"Oh, it's all very well to laugh. The situation is tragical enough, I assure you."

"Tragical enough to pay for the trouble of developing a certain grandeur of soul, but not, in true womanly fashion, to lose all composure."

The prince shook the ashes from his cigarette and went to the door to order the valet to serve the tea. When he returned, the countess suddenly came to meet him, held out her hand, and said with a bewitching smile:

"Prince, you are charming to-day, and I am unbearable. I thank you for the patience you have shown."

"Madeleine," he replied, controlling his emotion, "if I did not know your kind heart, I should believe you a Circe, who delighted in driving men mad. Were it not for my cold, sober reason, which you always emphasize, I should now mistake for love the feeling which makes you meet me so graciously, and thus expose myself to disappointment. But reason plainly shows that it is merely the gratitude of a kind heart for a trivial service rendered in an unpleasant situation, and I am too proud to do, in earnest, what I just said in jest--profit by the opportunity."

The countess, chilled and ashamed, drew her hand back. There spoke the dry, prosaic, commonplace man. Had he now understood how to profit by her mood when, in her helpless condition, he appeared as a deliverer in the hour of need, who knows what might have happened! But this was precisely what he disdained. The experienced man of the world knew women well enough to be perfectly aware how easily one may be won in a moment of nervous depression, desperate perplexity and helplessness, yet though ever ready to enjoy every piquant situation, nevertheless or perhaps for that very reason he was too proud to owe to an accident of this kind the woman whom he had chosen for the companion of his life. The countess felt this and was secretly glad that he had spared her and himself a disappointment.

"That is the way with women," he said softly, gazing at her with an almost compassionate expression. "For the mess of pottage of an agreeable situation, they will sell the birthright of their most sacred feelings."

"That is a solemn, bitter truth, such as I am not accustomed to hear from your lips, Prince. But however deep may be the gulf of realism whence you have drawn this experience, you shall not find it confirmed in me."

"That is, you will punish me henceforth by your coldness, while you know perfectly well that it was the sincerity of my regard for you which prompted my act, Countess, that vengeance would be unworthy; a woman like you ought not to sink to the petty sensitiveness of ordinary feminine vanity."

"Oh, Prince, you are always right, and, believe me, if I carried my heart in my head instead of in my breast, that is, if we could love with the intellect, I should have been yours long ago, but alas, my friend, it is so far from the head to the heart."

The Prince lighted another cigarette. No one could detect what was passing in his mind. "So much the worse for me!" he said coldly, shrugging his shoulders.

At that moment a sheet of flame filled the room, and the crashing thunder which followed sounded as if the ceiling had fallen and buried everything under it. The countess seemed bewildered.

"Mother, mother!" shrieked a voice outside. People gathered in the street, voices were heard, shouts, hurrying footsteps and the weeping of the little girl. The prince sprang out of the window, the countess regained her consciousness--of what?

"Some one has been struck by lightning." She hastened out.

A senseless figure was brought in and laid on the bench in the entry. It was the kind-hearted little creature whom her caprice had sent into the storm--perhaps to her death. There she lay silent and pale, with closed lids; her hands were cold her features sharp and rigid like those of a corpse, but her heart still throbbed under her drenched gown. The countess asked the prince to bring cologne and smelling salts from her satchel and skillfully applied the remedies; the prince helped her rub the arteries while she strove to restore consciousness with the sharp essences. Meanwhile the other sister soothed the weeping child. Andreas Gross poured a few drops of some liquid from a dusty flask into the sufferer's mouth, saying quietly, "You must not be so much frightened, I am something of a doctor; it is only a severe fainting fit. The other is worse."

"Were two persons struck?" asked the countess in horror.

"Yes, one of the musicians, the first violin."

A sudden thought darted through the countess' brain, and a feeling of dread stole over her as if there was in Ammergau a beloved life for which she must tremble. Yet she knew no one.

"Please bring a shawl from my room," she said to the prince, and when he had gone, she asked quickly: "Tell me, is the musician tall?"

"Oh, yes."

"Has he long black hair?"

"No, he is fair," replied the old man.

The countess, with a feeling of relief, remained silent, the prince returned. The sick woman opened her eyes and a faint moan escaped her lips.

"Here will be a fine scene," thought the prince. "Plenty of capital can be made out of such a situation. My lovely friend will outweigh every tear with a gold coin."

After a short time the woman regained sufficient consciousness to realize her surroundings and tried to lift her feet from the bench. "Oh, Countess, you will tax yourself too much. Please go in, there is a strong draught here."

"Yes, but you must come with me," said the countess, "try whether you can use your feet."

It was vain, she tried to take a step, but her feet refused to obey her will.

"Alas!" cried the countess deeply moved. "She is paralyzed--and it is my fault."

Anna gently took her hand and raised it to her lips. "Pray don't distress yourself, Countess, it will pass away. I am only sorry that I have caused you such a fright." She tried to smile, the ugly face looked actually beautiful at that moment, and the tones of her voice, whose tremor she strove to conceal, was so touching as she tried to comfort and soothe the self-reproach of the woman who had caused the misfortune that tears filled the countess' eyes.

"How wise she is," said the prince, marvelling at such delicacy and feeling.

"Come," said the countess, "we must get her into the warm rooms."

Andreas Gross, and at a sign from the prince, the valet, carried the sick woman in and laid her on the bench by the stove. The countess held her icy hand, while tears streamed steadily down the sufferer's cheeks.

"Do you feel any pain?" asked the lady anxiously.

"No, oh no--but I can't help weeping because the Countess is so kind to me--I am in no pain--no indeed!" She smiled again, the touching smile which seeks to console others.

"Yes, yes," said the old man, "you need not be troubled, she will be well to-morrow."

The child laid her head lovingly on her mother's breast, a singularly peaceful atmosphere pervaded the room, a modest dignity marked the bearing of the poor peasants. The prince and the countess also sat in thoughtful silence. Suddenly the sick woman started up, "Oh dear, I almost forget the main thing. The lady can have the lodgings. Two very handsome rooms and excellent attendance, but the countess must go at once as soon as the shower is over. They will be kept only an hour. More people will arrive at ten."

"I thank you," said the countess with a strange expression.

"Oh, there is no need. I am only glad I secured the rooms, and that the countess can have attendance," replied the sick woman joyously. "I shall soon be better, then I'll show the way."

"I thank you," repeated the countess earnestly. "I do not want the rooms, I shall stay here."

"What are you going to do?" asked the prince in amazement.

"Yes, I am ashamed that I was so foolish this evening. Will you keep me, you kind people, after I have done you so much injustice, and caused you such harm."

"Oh! you must consult your own pleasure. We shall be glad to have you stay with us, but we shall take no offence, if it would be more pleasant for you elsewhere," said the old man with unruffled kindness.

"Then I will stay."

"That is a good decision, Countess," said the prince. "You always do what is right." He beckoned to Sephi, the thin sister, and whispered a few words. She vanished in the countess' room, returning in a short time with dry shoes and stockings, which she had found in one of the travelling satchels. The prince went to the window and stood there with his back turned to the room. "We must do the best that opportunity permits," he said energetically. "I beg your highness to let this lady change your shoes and stockings. I am answerable for your health, not only to myself, but to society."

The countess submitted to the prince's arrangement, and the little ice-cold feet slid comfortably into the dry coverings, which Sephi had warmed at the stove. She now felt as if she was among human beings and gradually became more at ease. After Sephi had left the room she walked proudly up to the prince in her dry slippers, and said: "Come, Prince, let us pace to and fro, that our chilled blood may circulate once more."

The prince gracefully offered his arm and led her up and down the long work-shop. Madeleine was bewitching at that moment, and the grateful expression of her animated face suited her to a charm.

"I must go," he thought, "or I shall be led into committing some folly which will spoil all my chances with her."