CHAPTER VII.
Jessie sat in the garden and drew, and opposite to her in the arbour sat Gustave Sandow. He had just returned from town, where he had occupied himself about everything imaginable, except, alas! the one thing which was expected from the future head of the house of Clifford. He had not even set his foot within the counting-house. For there were so many other things to attend to. First he had visited a rich banker in the town, who had just received from Europe a costly painting on which he wished Gustave's opinion. As both owner and critic were alike eager on the subject, the inspection extended itself over the whole, tolerably valuable picture gallery of the banker, and occupied several hours.
After that, both gentlemen drove to a great meeting on some town interests, and at which Mr. Sandow, jun., was an eager and interested listener.
In conclusion, he had a small private meeting which some gentlemen of the press had called together in honour of their former colleague. The state of affairs in Germany and America was here thoroughly examined, and meanwhile it had become so late, that Gustave considered it quite unnecessary to visit his brother's office. He preferred driving direct to the villa to keep the ladies company.
After such a thoroughly satisfactory day's work, he thought himself justified in satisfying the craving of his heart, which could only happen when he, at least once a day, had a wrangle with Miss Clifford. With this intention he rapidly sought and found her.
During the last few weeks a noticeable change had taken place in Jessie. Some secret trouble, which she did not perhaps acknowledge to herself, cast a shade over the lovely face, which looked paler and more serious than before, and round the mouth, too, lay a half bitter, half painful line which was formerly not there. The presence of Gustave was clearly not likely to cheer her, for she avoided looking at him, and earnestly continued her drawing, while, to all his remarks, she returned only short and unconnected replies.
But it was not so easy to frighten Gustave away. When all his attempts at conversation failed he rose and bent over the half-finished drawing, which he examined with a critical eye.
"A very pretty subject! It promises much, but you must entirely change the perspective, Miss Clifford, it is quite wrong."
At last that produced the intended effect. Jessie raised her head, and looked indignantly at the uncalled adviser.
"You don't draw yourself, Mr. Sandow, I believe?"
"No, but I criticise."
"So I see. Nevertheless you will permit me to retain my perspective as it is, until a real artist has convinced me of its errors."
Gustave calmly took his seat again.
"Just as you please! I propose that we should call in Frida as arbiter. She has remarkable talent for drawing, and it has been cultivated with the greatest care."
"Frida?" repeated Jessie, letting her pencil rest, "I wanted to speak to you about her. She seems really to have nearly gained her end, for my guardian's interest in her increases day by day. For my part, this is rather perplexing, considering the indifference with which he treated her at first, but Frida must have found out how to get the right side of him, for suddenly he displayed so deep an interest in her as I had not conceived possible with his dry cold nature. Already he cannot bear to miss her. He shows unmistakable displeasure if the possibility of her departure is spoken of, and this morning, without the slightest remark on my side, he proposed to me that she should remain here permanently as my companion."
"Did he really propose that?" cried Gustave eagerly. "That is more, far more, than I had yet dared to hope. Certainly we are not far from our goal!"
"I think so too, and therefore it will soon be time to release the poor child from the painful and humiliating position in which she is. Here she is regarded as a total stranger, while she really stands in the closest connection with you; and is forced to keep up a constant succession of deceptions. I often see, at some harmless remark of my uncle's which she is obliged to avoid, how the blood flies to her cheeks, how the part she is forced to play embarrasses and distresses her. I fear she will not be able to endure it much longer."
"She must!" declared Gustave. "I know that it is hard for her, and sometimes she tries to rebel, but I understand already how to manage her."
Between Miss Clifford's delicate brows appeared a deep frown of displeasure.
"I acknowledge, Mr. Sandow, that your tone and your whole manner of treating Frida are quite incomprehensible to me. You treat her completely as a child that must obey implicitly your higher will, and seem quite to forget that she must take a place at your side some day."
"She must first be educated for it," said Gustave condescendingly. "At present she is scarcely sixteen, and I am thirty, therefore the child must look on me with respect."
"So it seems! I should expect something more from my future husband, than that he should set himself up as an object of my respect."
"Yes, Miss Clifford, that is quite different. No one would permit himself such a tone towards you."
"I suppose my fortune gives me a claim to more consideration. With the poor dependent orphan, whom one elevates to one's own position, any manner is permitted."
The remark sounded so bitter that Gustave noticed it, and cast a questioning glance at the young lady.
"Do you think that Frida belongs to those natures which allow themselves to be thus elevated?"
"No; I think her very proud, and far more courageous than is usual at her age. Just on that account is this unquestioning docility incomprehensible."
"Yes. I am rather successful in training," acknowledged Gustave. "But as to your proposition, to tell the whole to my brother immediately, that is impossible. You don't know my brother; his obstinacy is by no means conquered, and would return doubly strong if he discovered our plot. The moment that he learnt that I had brought Frida here with a decided purpose, his anger would burst forth, and he would send us both back across the ocean."
"That would indeed be a misfortune, for then the advantage of the whole intrigue would be lost."
Jessie must indeed have been irritated before she allowed the hateful word "intrigue" to pass her lips, but it slipped out, and Gustave quite accepted it.
"Quite right; that is what I fear, and it would never do to jeopardise it thus, now my heart is set on remaining here."
There was a peculiar light in his eyes at the last words. Jessie did not see it; she had bent again over her drawing, and worked away with renewed zeal, but the pencil trembled in her hand, and the strokes became hasty and uncertain. Gustave watched her for a while; at last he rose again.
"No, Miss Clifford, it really will not do to treat the perspective like that. Permit me one moment."
And without further ceremony, he took the pencil from her hand, and began to alter the drawing. Jessie was about to make a violent protest, but she quickly saw that the pencil was in a very practised hand, and that a few powerful strokes entirely corrected the error.
"You declared you could not draw," said she, wavering between anger and surprise.
"Oh! It is only a little dilletante performance, which I do not venture to call talent. Only enough to enable me to criticise. Here, Miss Clifford."
He returned the leaf to her. Jessie looked silently at it and then at him.
"I really admire your versatility, of which you have just given me a proof. You are everything imaginable, Mr. Sandow! Politician, journalist, artist.--"
"And merchant," said Gustave, completing the sentence. "Yes, I am a sort of universal genius, but share alas, the fate of all geniuses; I am not recognised by my contemporaries."
His half-ironical inclination showed that for the moment he looked upon her as representing his contemporaries. Jessie made no reply, but began to collect her drawing materials.
"It is quite chilly. I ought to go in. Pray do not disturb yourself; I will send the servant to fetch my things," and declining with a motion of her hand any assistance from him, she took the drawing from the table, and left the summer-house.
Gustave shook his head as he looked after her.
"I seem really to have fallen into disgrace; the last few weeks she has been quite changed. I would rather hear the most violent attack on my selfishness and want of thought than this cool and measured bitterness. I fear it is high time for me to tell all the truth, and yet I dare not risk Frida's future by so doing. A premature catastrophe would spoil all."
At that moment a carriage drove past the villa. It was Sandow returning from business. He came direct to the garden.
"Here already!" was the short greeting he bestowed on his brother. "Where are the ladies?"
"Miss Clifford has just left me."
"And Miss Palm?"
"I suppose she is on the beach. I have not seen her since my return."
Sandow's eyes impatiently sought the farther part of the garden. He seemed disappointed that Frida had not come to meet him as usual.
"I have not seen you since this morning," he remarked with temper. "You certainly asked leave on account of pressing business, still I expected to see you in the office later. What kind of business can you have which occupies a whole day?"
"Well, first I was with Henderson, the banker."
"Ah! About the new loan which is being raised in M----. I am glad that you have seen him yourself."
"Naturally about the loan," said Gustave, who did not scruple to leave his brother in error about his business proceedings, though in his wanderings through the picture gallery there had been no mention of the projected loan. "And then there was some talk about private affairs. When Mrs. Henderson was last here she saw our young country woman, and is quite charmed with her. It is remarkable what an effect this still, timid child produces on every one. From their first meeting, Miss Clifford, too, became one of her warmest friends."
"The child is not so quiet and shy as you imagine," said Sandow, whose eyes continued to look towards the shore. "Beneath that reserve is a deeply emotional, a quite uncommon nature. I never suspected it till accident revealed it to me."
"And since then, you, too, belong to the conquered. Really, Frank, I scarcely know you again. You treat this young girl, this almost total stranger, with a consideration, one might almost say a tenderness, of which your only and highly deserving brother has never been able to boast."
Sandow had seated himself, and thoughtfully supported his head on his hand.
"There is something so fresh, so untouched, in such a young creature. Against one's will it recalls one's own youthful days. She still clings so fast to her enthusiastic ideas, to her dreams of happiness to come, and cannot understand that the outer world should look on things under such a different aspect. Foolish, childish ideas, which will fall away of themselves in the rough school of the world, but while one listens to them all one's lost beliefs by degrees revive again."
Again his voice had that peculiar softened tone, which those even who best knew the merchant had never heard from his lips, and which seemed like an echo from some older, happier time. Frida must indeed have understood how to touch the right chord as no one before had done, for the very qualities, which in Jessie were regarded as sentimentality and exaggeration, had here found their way to the stern, cold heart of the man. Gustave felt this contradiction, and said, with a touch of satire--
"But all that should not be new to you. You have lived all these years in Clifford's family, and Jessie has grown up under your eyes."
"Jessie was always her parents' idolized darling," replied Sandow, coldly. "Love and happiness were literally showered upon her, and whoever did not treat her with flattery and tenderness, as myself for example, was feared and avoided by her. I have always been a stranger to this fair-haired, soft and petted child, and since she has been grown up, we have become still more distant. But this Frida with her wilful reserve, which we must overcome before reaching the real nature, has nothing weak and wavering about her. When once the somewhat forbidding crust has been broken through, strength and life are found beneath. I like such natures, perhaps because I feel something kindred in them, and sometimes I am surprised, almost startled, to hear from the lips of that girl, remarks and ideas almost identical with what were mine at the same age."
Gustave made no reply, but he closely examined his brother's countenance. The latter felt this, and, as if ashamed of the warmer feeling he had allowed himself to display, immediately stopped, and resumed his usual cold business tone and manner.
"You might at least have come to the office for a few hours. There are things of importance going on, and another letter from Jenkins has arrived. He presses for the fulfilment of your promise with regard to the K--che Zeitung, and it is certainly high time. You must have written your article long since."
"I had not supposed there was any hurry," said Gustave. "For some weeks you have not even mentioned the subject."
"There were so many preparations to make. I have kept up an active correspondence with New York on the subject."
"Which you have not allowed me to see as you did the former letters."
"Then it was necessary for you to learn all particulars. This time it concerned very unpleasant difficulties which I alone must arrange."
"I know; you have tried to release yourself from the whole thing!"
Sandow sprang up, and looked at his brother with the same air of speechless astonishment, as formerly when he heard of the journey to the much talked of possessions.
"I! Who has betrayed that to you?"
"No one, but many signs led me to suppose so, and now I see that I was not mistaken in my supposition."
Sandow looked darkly and suspiciously at his brother, who stood before him with perfect composure.
"You have really a dangerous power of observation! With you one must be perpetually under control, and even then is not safe in his inmost thoughts. Well yes, then, I did wish to withdraw. On closer examination the speculation did not seem so favourable, did not promise half the profit we had at first believed. I tried to release myself from the obligation, or to induce someone else to take my place, but have not been successful. Jenkins stands by the completion of our bargain, and I have now pledged myself completely. Nothing remains but to promptly carry out the first agreement."
He brought out these disjointed remarks with nervous haste, and meanwhile played with his pocket-book which he had drawn out. His whole manner displayed a violent, hardly suppressed excitement. Gustave did not appear to notice it, but replied with calm decision--
"Now there must be some means of freeing oneself from such a bargain."
"No; for the sums which I have already sunk in this undertaking bind my hands. I stand the chance of losing all, if I withdraw now. Jenkins is just the man to hold me fast, and to use every letter of the contract against me, as soon as our interests cease to go hand in hand. So the thing must take its course.--Ah! Miss Frida, at last you allow us a glimpse of you."
The last words, which sounded like a sigh of relief, were directed to the girl who now appeared in the arbour. During the last weeks Frida had also altered, but the change took a different form, than with Jessie. The childish face formerly so pale had now a rosy tinge, the dark eyes were still grave, but they had lost that troubled look. They sparkled with glad surprise when they beheld the master of the house, whom Frida immediately approached with frank confidingness.
"Are you home already, Mr. Sandow? I did not know, or I should have come long ago, but"--she looked at the serious faces of the two men, and made a movement as if to leave them--"I am afraid I disturb you."
"Not at all," said Sandow quickly. "We were only debating on some business matters, and I am glad to make an end of the discussion. Stay here!"
He threw his pocket-book on the table and stretched out his hand. The cold, stern man, whose austere manner had never softened even in the family circle, seemed at this moment another being. The few weeks must have wrought a great change in him.
Gustave greeted Frida in the polite but formal manner, which he always showed to her in the presence of his brother.
"I have a message and an invitation for you, Miss Palm," said he. "Mrs. Henderson would like to see you soon, in order to talk farther with you over the arrangement which has been already mentioned."
"What arrangement is that?" asked Sandow, becoming suddenly attentive.
Frida cast a startled and questioning look at Gustave, and replied with some uncertainty--
"Mrs. Henderson's companion is leaving, and the situation has been offered to me. I had better"--
"You will not accept it," interrupted Sandow with decision. Vexation was audible in his voice. "Why this haste? There must be other and better places to be found."
"The banker's family is one of the first in the town," remarked Gustave.
"And Mrs. Henderson one of the most insupportable women, who torments her entire household with her nerves and whims, and her companion is a perfect victim to them. No, Miss Frida, give up the idea. I will on no account agree to your taking this situation."
An almost imperceptible but triumphant smile played round Gustave's lips.
Frida stood speechless, her eyes on the ground; all the old awkwardness seemed to have returned with these words.
Sandow misunderstood her silence. He looked searchingly at her, and then continued more slowly--
"Of course I do not wish to control your wishes. If you want to leave us"--
"No! no!" cried Frida, so passionately that Gustave was obliged to make a warning sign to her, to remind her of the necessity of self-control.
She quickly collected herself, and said with a trembling voice--
"I am so much afraid of being tiresome to Miss Clifford."
"That is a foolish idea," said Sandow reprovingly. "Tiresome to us! My niece will soon convince you of the contrary. She will make you a better offer than Mrs. Henderson's. Jessie is far too much alone, and needs a companion; it is not good for a young girl to be quite without one of her own sex. Will you be this companion, Frida? Will you stay altogether with us?"
The girl raised her eyes to him; they were wet with tears, and there was something in them which looked like a prayer for forgiveness.
"If you agree to it, Mr. Sandow, I will gratefully accept Miss Clifford's kindness, but only if you wish me to remain."
Over Sandow's face flashed a smile, slight, but it brightened like a ray of sunshine the dark, stern features.
"Am I, then, such a dreaded power in the house? Jessie has, then, already spoken of this project, and you feared my refusal. No, no, child! My niece is perfectly free to do as she pleases, and I will immediately talk the thing over with her, and settle it once for all. Mrs. Henderson shall learn to-morrow morning that she must look for another companion."
He rose, and waving her a slight, but friendly greeting, left the arbour.
Scarcely was he out of hearing when Gustave approached the girl.
"He is afraid that the Hendersons will kidnap you from him, and hastens to make sure of you!" said he triumphantly. "Why do you look so terrified? Do you think I shall hand you over to Mrs. Henderson, who to-day certainly gave me the message to you, but who really deserves the character my brother has given her. I was obliged to learn how he would look on the idea of your leaving. He was quite beside himself about it. Bravo, child! You have managed your affairs capitally, and now, instead of the censure I first heaped upon you, must declare that I am thoroughly satisfied with you."
Frida paid no attention to the eulogy. Her eyes followed Sandow, who was just disappearing behind the shrubbery. Now she turned and said--
"I can deceive him no longer. As long as he was hard and cold I might have done it; now, the falsehood crushes me to the earth!"
"Cast the whole responsibility on me," said Gustave encouragingly. "I have placed you in this position, have woven the 'intrigue,' as Miss Clifford so flatteringly expresses it; I will also bear the responsibility when the moment for explanation comes. But now the watchword is 'forward!' and we must not fail for a moment. When we are so near our aim, we must persevere. Think of that, and promise me that you will endure to the end."
Frida drooped her head; she did not refuse, but neither did she give the required promise.
Gustave continued in a serious tone--
"Jessie, too, urges me to a declaration, and, I see, cannot comprehend my hesitation. She does not understand the circumstances, but believes that you are a stranger to her guardian, who has won his affection, and to whom he would gladly open his arms. But we"--here he seized Frida's hand, and grasped it firmly in his own--"we know better, my poor child! We know that you have to struggle with a gloomy hatred which has already poisoned his life, and has rooted itself so firmly in that life that a few kind words cannot banish it. I struggled for your rights when my brother left Europe, have tried again and again, and have thus learnt how deeply grafted in him is this miserable idea. You must become still more to him if it is entirely to be torn from him. Can you think that without the most urgent necessity I would lay such a yoke upon you?"
"Oh, no, certainly not! I will obey you in everything, only it is so hard to lie."
"Not to me!" declared Gustave. "I would never have believed that the Jesuitical principle, 'the end justifies the means,' could have been such a perfect antidote to all the pricks of conscience. I lie with a kind of peace of mind, or rather with a conscious sublimity. But you need not take a pattern by me. It is by no means necessary that a child like you should have attained such a height of objectivity. On the contrary, falsehood must and should be difficult to you, and it gives me the greatest satisfaction to know that such is the case."
"But Jessie," said Frida, "may I not at least take her into our confidence? She has been so kind, so affectionate to me, a stranger, has opened her arms as if to a sister"--
"To get rid of me!" interrupted Gustave. "Yes, that is why she received you with open arms. In order to escape my wooing she would have deceived the very old gentleman himself, if he would have delivered her from the unwelcome suitor. No, no, Jessie is out of the question. It is my special delight to be despised by her, and I must enjoy it a little while longer."
"Because the whole thing is only play to you," said Frida reproachfully, "but she suffers from it."
"Who? Jessie? Not at all. She is in the highest degree shocked at my wickedness, and I must give myself the one little satisfaction of leaving her still this sentiment."
"You are mistaken; it gives her bitter pain to be obliged to judge you so. I know how she has wept over it."
Gustave sprang up as if electrified.
"Is that true? Have you really seen it? She has wept?"
Frida looked with unmeasured surprise at his beaming face.
"And you are glad of it. Can you really blame her if she has a mistaken opinion of you when you have caused that mistake? Can you be so revengeful as to torment her for it?"
"Oh! the wisdom of sixteen years!" cried Gustave, bursting into irrepressible laughter. "You will defend your friend against me, will you?--against me? You are indeed very wise for your years, my little Frida, but of such things you understand nothing, and, indeed, it is not necessary. You can still wait a couple of years. But now tell me all about it! When did Jessie weep? What did she cry for? How do you know that the tears concerned me? Tell me, tell me, or I shall die of impatience!"
His face indeed betrayed the highest excitement, and he seemed actually to devour the words from the girl's lips. Frida seemed certainly to know nothing of such things, for she looked astonished to the last degree, but yielded at last to his urgency.
"Jessie asked me seriously a short time ago if I would really entrust my whole future to such an egoist as you. I defended you, awkwardly enough, as I dared not betray you, and was obliged to submit to all the reproaches heaped on you."
"And then?" asked Gustave breathlessly, "and then?"
"Then, in the midst of the conversation, Jessie suddenly burst into tears, and cried--'You are blind, Frida; you persist in your blindness, and yet I have only your happiness in view! You don't know what dreadful pain it gives me to have to place this man in such a light before you, or what I would give if he stood as pure and high in my eyes as in yours!' And then she rushed away and locked herself in her room. But I know that she cried for hours."
"That is incomparable, heavenly news!" cried Gustave, in fullest delight. "Child, you do not know how cleverly you have observed. Come, I must give you a kiss for it!"
And with that he seized the girl in his arms and kissed her heartily on both cheeks.