Read Ebook: At the Councillor's; or A Nameless History by Marlitt E Eugenie Wister A L Annis Lee Translator

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Ebook has 1318 lines and 119394 words, and 27 pages

"True, it is very sad; but how can it affect us? I really cannot see how to excuse you to my friends."

"They can hardly be so dull of comprehension, those worthy people, as not to understand that Kitty's grand-papa has died?" Henriette remarked, looking back over her shoulder from where she was standing in front of the book-shelves, apparently reading assiduously the titles of the books.

"Henriette, I pray you spare me your pert observations," the Frau President said. "You can, if you choose, tone down your flame-coloured head-dress, for Kitty is your step-sister; but with regard to Moritz and myself, the connection is so slight that we need take no conventional notice of the death, deplore it as we may. And, for Bruck's sake, the less said about it the better."

"My dear Moritz, you should hear what my old friend Doctor von B?r has to say upon that point," the Frau President said, in interruption, lightly tapping him upon the shoulder and making a significant motion of her head towards Flora, who had gone to her writing-table.

"Oh, do not mind me, grandmamma! Do you think me so blind and deaf as not to know what B?r's opinion is?" the beautiful girl exclaimed, with bitterness. "Bruck has, besides, condemned himself: he has not ventured to come near me this evening."

Hitherto Henriette had been standing with her back towards the rest. Now she turned round; a burning blush suddenly coloured her sallow cheek and as quickly faded. Her eyes were wonderfully fine, revealing depths of passionate feeling. They glowed like stars as she turned them, with a mixture of shy terror and positive hatred, upon her sister's countenance.

"Your last accusation he will refute in person; he will shortly be here, Flora," said the councillor, evidently relieved. "He will tell you himself that he has been driven hard indeed, to-day. You know how many patients he has seriously ill in town,--among them the poor little Lenz girl, who cannot live until morning."

"Yes, an authority filled with envy," said Henriette, in a clear, ringing voice. She had hastily approached, and laid her hand upon her brother-in-law's arm. "Give up trying to convince Flora, Moritz. You must see that she is determined to find her lover guilty."

"Determined? 'Tis false! I would give half that I possess to regard Bruck as I did in the beginning of our engagement,--with the same proud trust and confidence," Flora exclaimed, passionately. "But since the death of the Countess Wallendorf I have been a silent prey to doubt and mistrust; now I doubt no more: I am convinced. I know nothing, it is true, of that feminine weakness that loves without ever asking, 'Is he whom I love worthy my devotion?' I am ambitious, wildly ambitious; I care not who knows it. Without that mainspring I too might saunter along the broad highway of the commonplace like the weak and indolent of my sex. God forbid such a fate for me! How an aspiring and intellectual woman can pass her life quietly and composedly, linked to an insignificant husband, has always been incomprehensible to me; I should writhe beneath the shame of such a position."

"Oh, indeed! would it so shame you? Well, well, I suppose it would require more courage than is needed to hold forth to a roomful of students upon aesthetics and what not," Henriette said, with a smile full of malice.

Flora cast a contemptuous glance at her sister. "Hiss, little viper, if you will. What can you know of my ideal?" she said, with a shrug. "But you are right in thinking I should be more at home in the lecture-room than by the side of a man who has stamped himself a bungler in his profession; I could not endure such chains."

"That is your affair, my child," the Frau President coolly remarked, while the councillor looked up in dismay. "You must remember that no one forced you to fetter yourself thus."

"I know that perfectly well, grandmamma; I know, too, that you would greatly have preferred that I should become the wife of the Chamberlain von Stetten, physical and financial bankrupt though he be. I grant you, also, that I refuse to allow myself to be influenced or led by others, since I know best what best beseems me.

"There, too, you are your own mistress," her grandmother rejoined, with frigid dignity; "only remember one thing,--you will find in me a determined opponent to anything like a public scandal. You surely know me well enough to be aware that I would far rather endure great personal annoyance than give any occasion for gossip. I reside here with you, and take upon myself the duties of mistress of the house with pleasure, but I must in return exact an unconditional respect for my name and position; I will not have society whispering and tattling about our affairs."

The councillor turned hastily away. He went to a window, pulled aside the curtain, and gazed out into the night. The wind, which had gradually risen to a tempest, rattled at the window-frame, and in the red light cast upon the bare, tossing branches outside, by the lamp hanging in the other window, the crimsoned snow-flakes whirled madly hither and thither like the tormenting thoughts in his own brain. He had a short time before debated in his mind whether he should not explain matters fully, at least to Flora; now he knew that she was the last person to whom he could speak upon the subject, if he did not wish that the whisper and tattle of society should drive the Frau President from his house. No; he saw clearly that his ambitious sister-in-law would publish his confession far and wide, less from solicitude for her lover than from a desire to prove that her heart, or rather her head, could not have been mistaken in its choice.

Meanwhile, Henriette turned a face of anger and scorn towards her grandmother. "It is solely to avoid furnishing gossip for society, then, that you would have my sister bear herself blameless? She can easily satisfy you. You will instantly acquit her if she can cover her breach of faith with a silken mantle. But indeed you need not be so sensitive upon the subject of scandal, grandmamma: those living in the world as we do, soon find out that society regards many a sinner of rank and wealth much as it does an old piece of valuable porcelain,--the more patched the more precious."

"I must request you to pass the remainder of the evening in your own room, Henriette," the Frau President said, now seriously angry. "In your present mood, I cannot permit you to return to the drawing-room."

"As you please, grandmamma. Come, Jack, we will go with the greatest pleasure," she said, smiling, smoothing with her cheek the bird's plumage as it sat on her forefinger. "You hate those old court-ladies, too; and you regularly peck at the great medical authority, Herr von B?r, and nip his finger, you good little fellow, when he tries to coax you with sugar. Good-night, grandmamma; good-night, Moritz." She paused in her hasty departure, and turned back. "That strong-minded lady there," she said, with cutting emphasis, "will probably pursue the path which her dead father would have inexorably forbidden to her; while he lived there was no chance for her boasted exercise of her own will. He would never have allowed her to break her troth with an honourable man."

She left the room with her head proudly erect, but, even as she crossed the threshold, the tears which had been plainly audible in her voice as she spoke the last words gushed from her eyes.

"Thank God, she has gone!" cried Flora. "What an amount of self-control is required not to lose one's patience with her!"

"I never forget her invalid condition," the Frau President remarked, in a reproving tone.

"And she is right, in a certain sense, Flora," the councillor ventured to interpose.

"You may think as you choose upon that point, Moritz," the young lady rejoined, coldly; "but I must earnestly entreat you not to make my task more difficult by your interference. I am used, as I said just now, to judge for myself in what concerns me, and I shall do so in this case. And you may be perfectly easy,--you and grandmamma. I excessively dislike any sudden and harsh measure, and I have a noiseless ally,--time."

She took the goblet from the writing-table and moistened her pale lips with a few drops of its contents, while the Frau President, without further remonstrance, prepared to leave the room.

"Apropos, Moritz," she said, with her hand upon the knob of the door, "what is to be done with Kitty now?"

"We must leave it to the will to decide all that," he replied, drawing a long breath of relief. "I have no idea how the castle miller has arranged matters. Kitty is his natural heir, but it is doubtful whether he has left all his property to her; he always resented the fact that her birth cost his daughter her life. In any case she must come here for a while."

"Do not trouble yourself about that; she will not come; she is tied as securely to-day to the apron-string of her detestable old governess as she was during papa's lifetime," said Flora. "That is easy to see from her letters."

"Well, perhaps it is better that she should stay where she is," the Frau President remarked, with a shade of eagerness. "To be candid, I have no great desire to shelter her beneath my wing and waste my time in schooling her; it is very tiresome. I never really liked her; not because she was the child of my daughter's successor,--that I have always declared,--but she was altogether too much at home in the mill, getting her clothes and hair covered with meal; and then she was a self-willed little thing."

"A genuine 'child of the people,' and yet--papa's darling," Flora added, with a bitter smile.

"Apparently, my dear, because she was his youngest child," said the Frau President, who never permitted a suspicion, either in herself or in others, that any one belonging to her could be slighted. "You were just as much his darling at one time. Well, Moritz, are you coming?"

He hastily complied. As they left the room, Flora rang for her maid. "I wish to retire to my dressing-room to write; take my writing-materials and these papers there for me," she ordered. "Of course I can see no one this evening."

The red glow was no longer seen outside the windows, but the brilliant light from the drawing-room gleamed over the tempest-swept avenue until long past midnight. The councillor was at one of the card-tables. Upon his entrance every one received him with a kindly greeting or a warm pressure of the hand, that fell like sunshine on his anxious, troubled heart. Here, among these faces, stamped with the pride of noble birth or official arrogance, his line of conduct seemed so perfectly justifiable that he could hardly understand the tormenting scruples that assailed him. Why expose one's self to hostile criticism when one is conscious of entire innocence even in thought? And then such a low affair altogether! All this delightful scandal which was now whispered about, these stories over which each noble guest was glad to throw "a silken mantle," concerned high-born errors; but what mercy could these people show to one among them, not legitimately of them, accused of a vulgar attempt to rob the castle miller's safe? He could, however, no longer console himself with the idea that his silence harmed no one: it threatened to sever two human souls united by a betrothal ring. Pshaw! Flora was an eccentric creature. The next time some special distinction was awarded to Bruck, which his great learning and ability made certain, matters would be all right again. And with a glass of delicious punch he drained down his last scruple.

The castle miller had in fact left his granddaughter, Katharina Mangold, his sole heiress, and confirmed as her guardian the man previously selected as such by her deceased father. This guardian was Councillor R?mer, who, at the reading of the will, shook his head and pondered deeply upon the inconsistencies that exist in the human soul. The old man who had wellnigh throttled him under the influence of a mad suspicion that he was robbing him of his gold, had, scarcely an hour before, appointed him his executor, with almost limitless authority. He had provided that in case the operation about to be performed resulted in death, all his real estate, with the exception of the castle mill, should be sold. With regard to this exception, he declared that the mill had made him a wealthy man, and that his granddaughter, even although she came to be as "proud and haughty" as her step-sisters, had no need to be ashamed of bringing it to her future husband. The baronial estate to which it belonged was to be divided, and each portion--forest-land, farm-land, farm-buildings, meadows, and kitchen-gardens--sold singly to the highest bidder. As for the villa, with its surrounding park, it was to be sold likewise, and Councillor R?mer was to be allowed to purchase it, if he wished to do so, at the rate of five thousand thalers less than its taxable value. These five thousand thalers were his, not only as some indemnification for his trouble as guardian, but in token of the "esteem" of the testator for a man who had never been haughty "like the rest of them at the villa," but more like a kind and even devoted relative. The will further provided that the whole property should be invested in government securities and other solid stock, the choice of which should be left entirely to the guardian, as a prudent and careful man of business.

The young heiress had lived for the past six years away from home. Her dying father had left her in charge to a Fr?ulein Lukas, who had been her governess always,--in fact, had supplied a mother's place to her. Herr Mangold saw plainly that his darling, who had held herself shyly aloof from the step-sisters so much her elders, must not be deprived of her governess's tender care, and had therefore provided that she should accompany Fr?ulein Lukas to Dresden, whither the latter removed shortly after her employer's death, and upon her marriage with a physician to whom she had long been betrothed. In the young girl's letters thence to her guardian she had never expressed a wish to revisit her home, nor had it ever occurred to her grandfather, the castle miller, to recall her. He had acquiesced willingly in her removal to Dresden, because the sight of her constantly renewed his grief for his daughter, the only being whom he had ever really loved. Now, after his death, the girl's guardian requested her to return, for some time at least, arranging at the same time to be her escort himself from Dresden as soon as the weather should become warmer, towards the end of April, since--this fact, however, he naturally suppressed--the Frau President Urach had protested against her being accompanied by the former governess. His ward had acceded to everything, and, upon his asking her further whether she had any personal wish with regard to the disposal of her property, had begged that when the castle mill was rented, the huge corner room and the recess with which it communicated might be reserved for her, and that everything in them might be left exactly as it had been during her grandfather's lifetime. This was done.

It was March, and a young girl was walking from town upon the highway, here and there bordered by neat cottages. She turned into the broad road leading to the castle mill. The traces of the last snow-storm had not entirely disappeared, the water had not dried in the broad ruts left by the wheels of the mill-wagons or in the deep footprints of the passers-by; but the young girl's little feet were encased in stout leather boots, and her black silk dress was so well caught up that there was no trace of mud upon its edge. She looked no elf or fairy as she walked on with a sure, elastic step. No; she was rather like some fair Alpine maid, with veins and sinews full of vigorous health, nourished by the pure breath of the mountain air and the sweet fresh milk of mountain-fed cows. A close black velvet jacket, trimmed with fur, showed the full, graceful outlines of bust and waist, and upon her brown hair sat, a little to one side, a cap of marten-skin. Her features were far from classically regular: the aquiline nose was too short for the width and shape of the brow, the mouth too large, the dimpled chin too strongly marked, the eyebrows not sufficiently delicate; but all these defects were more than atoned for by the pure oval of the whole face and the incomparable freshness and beauty of its colouring.

She turned into the open door of the court-yard of the castle mill, scattering before her a number of chickens assembled upon the wagon-road to pick up some scattered grains of wheat. They flew hither and thither with a loud cackling, and a couple of watch-dogs, roused from their lazy doze by the noise, barked furiously. How bright and golden the warm spring sunshine looked, flooding the walls of the grand old pile of masonry heaped up in ancient times beneath the eye of its noble builder! The day before yesterday the last thick icicle had fallen clattering from the open jaws of the lion's head at the end of the gutter on the roof, above which the air was now quivering with heat from the sun-baked slate. The sap was swelling in the big brown chestnut-buds, making them glisten as if powdered with diamond-dust; a couple of pots containing some languishing plants had been put outside of the window of one of the miller's rooms, to enjoy the first breath of spring; and upon the well-worn wooden steps leading from this very room was seated a dusty miller, eating a huge piece of bread-and-cheese.

"Moor! Watch! good dogs!" the young girl called across the yard in a coaxing voice. The dogs leaped about madly, whining as they tugged at their chains.

"What do you want?" asked the miller, rising clumsily.

She laughed gently. "I want nothing, Franz, except to say 'good-day' to Susie and yourself."

"Better than you do; the 'size' has not led them astray," she replied, going over to the dogs and caressing them as they leaped up upon her. "You give me a wonderful title, Franz; I have not been promoted in Dresden, I assure you."

"But the Fr?uleins over in the villa are always called so," he said, doggedly.

"Indeed!"

"And you are worth ten of them. So young and rich,--so immensely rich! There's the mill,--the finest far or near. Zounds! 'tis a prize indeed. Good gracious!--only a girl, hardly eighteen years old, and the owner of such a mill!"

She laughed. "Yes, it is mine; and a dreary life I shall lead you, old Franz. But where is Susie?"

"Keeping her room; 'tis in her right side again, poor old thing! Her own doctoring did no good, and Doctor Bruck is there now."

The girl gave him her hand and went into the house. The heavy oaken door swung to behind her with a jar that resounded from all four walls of the large hall. Beneath her feet the floor trembled and shook with the dull sound of the machinery that was heard through a low, open door in a stone-vaulted archway, and the odour of freshly-ground grain filled the air. The young girl breathed it in eagerly; a flood of memories overcame her; she grew pale with emotion, and stood still for a moment with folded hands. Yes, she had indeed loved to make herself "at home" in the mill, as the Frau President had said, and her father had often brushed the flour from her dress and braids and laughingly called her his "little white miller's mouse." Thu stern old man, her grandfather, whom she could best remember shouting down his orders, in a harsh, authoritative voice, from the first landing of the stairs, had never loved her; she had almost always fled from his cross looks either to Susie's bright kitchen or to Franz; and yet she now thought of him with deep regret, and wished he were just descending the stairs that had creaked beneath his heavy tread; perhaps she should no longer have feared his face, repulsive, as she now knew, with the insolence of wealth; perhaps he would have been gentler and kinder, now that she had grown like her grandmother.

She found the door of the corner room up-stairs locked, but along the narrow passage connecting the back building with the main part of the mill she heard Susie's wailing voice. Ah, yes, there was the poor old servant's sleeping-room,--a dark little chamber, with round, leaded panes of glass in the windows, through which were seen the gray thatched roof of a wood-shed, and the pavement, always damp, of the side-yard. She shook her head impatiently, and walked along the passage.

As she entered the sick-room, the close, heated atmosphere of which was filled with smoke, she saw in the dim light that penetrated the old green glass of the window a man standing with his back towards her. He was very tall, much taller than she, and broad-shouldered in proportion. He was apparently about to depart, for he had hat and cane in hand. Ah, this, then, was Doctor Bruck, of whom her brother-in-law Moritz had told her when he informed her of the betrothal of her beautiful sister Flora,--how, as a student, the young doctor had secretly loved the much-admired and f?ted belle, but had not dared to aspire then to the hand that was at length his own; this, then, was he. She had almost forgotten the engagement, and had never during her journey thither remembered that she should see this new member of the family.

The opening door had swung noiselessly upon its hinges, but perhaps the girl's silk dress rustled, or the stream of fresh air that she brought with her, and that seemed laden with the breath of violets, startled the young physician; he turned hastily.

"Doctor Bruck? I am Kitty Mangold," she said, briefly introducing herself; and, passing him quickly, she held out both hands to Susie, who sat propped up with pillows in an arm-chair.

The old woman stared at her with bewildered eyes.

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