“Can you read German?”
“Not a line.” For my few words of conversational foreign tongues have been learnt orally, the better to communicate with stray patients in hospitals. I told her so. “I am very ignorant, as you must have long since found out, Miss Theodora.”
She said nothing, but began to read. At first translating line by line; then saying a written translation would be less trouble, she fetched one. It was in her handwriting—probably her own doing.
No doubt every one, except such an unlearned ass as myself, is familiar with the story—historical, I believe she said—how a young soldier, Max Piccolomini, fell in love with the daughter of his General Wallenstein, who, heading an insurrection, wished the youth to join in-promising him the girl's hand. There is one scene where the father tempts, and brings the daughter to tempt him, by hope of this bliss, to turn rebel; but the young man is firm—the girl, too, when he appeals to her, bids him keep to his duty, and renounce his love. It is a case such as may have happened—might happen in these days—were modern men and women capable of such attachments. Something of the sort of love upon which Dallas used to theorise when we were boys, always winding up with his favourite verse—how strange that it should come back to my mind now:—
“I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.”
Max—odd enough the name sounded, and she hesitated over it at first, with a half-laughing apology, then forgetting all but her book, it came out naturally and sweetly—oh, so sweetly sometimes—Max died. How, I do not clearly remember, but I know he died, and never married the girl he loved; that the time when he held her in his arms, and kissed her before her father and them all, was the last time they ever saw one another.
She read, sometimes hurriedly and almost inaudibly, and then just like the people who were speaking, as if quite forgetting herself in them. I do not think she even recognised that there was a listener in the room. Perhaps she thought, because I sat so still, that I did not hear or feel, that I, Max Urquhart, have altogether forgotten what it is to be young and to love.
When she ceased, Mr. Johnston was sound asleep; we both sat silent. I stretched out my hand for the written pages, to go over some of the sentences again; she went on reading the German volume to herself. Her face was turned away, but I could see the curve of her cheek, and the smooth, spiral twist of her hair behind—I suppose, if untwisted, it would reach down to her knees. This German girl, Thekla, might have had just such hair; this boy—this Max—might have been allowed sometimes to touch it—reverently to kiss it.