Gold Elsie

by E. Marlitt

For a week past she had been daily to the castle. Fräulein von Walde had been steadily improving in health since the afternoon when, as the baroness tenderly expressed it, she had found a cure in the coffee which she herself had prepared, and in Herr von Hollfeld's arrival. She was diligently practising several duets, and at last confided to Elizabeth that she wished to celebrate her brother's birthday fête the last of August. It was to be a very splendid celebration, for she intended to make it also a welcome home to the long absent traveller. On that day he should first hear her play again after so many years, and she knew what a pleasant surprise it would be to him.

Elizabeth always looked forward with a mixture of pleasure and dread to these practisings. She did not know why herself; but the castle and park had suddenly become dear and attractive to her; she even had a kind of tender regard for the bank where she had sat with Herr von Walde, as if it were an old friend; she made a little circuit in order to pass by it. Herr von Hollfeld's behaviour inspired her, on the contrary, with very different feelings. After she had several times foiled his attempts to meet her by a hasty avoidance of him, he came to Fräulein von Walde's room, one day, and begged permission to remain there during the lesson. To Elizabeth's terror, Helene, with delight beaming in her eyes, assured him that he was doubly welcome as a convert who had hitherto had no taste whatever for music. He now made his appearance regularly, silently laying some fresh flowers upon the piano before Helene as he entered, in consequence of which she invariably struck several false chords. Then he retired to a deep window-seat whence he could look the players directly in the face. As long as the practising continued he covered his eyes with his hand, as if he wished to shut out the world that he might resign himself entirely to the charms of music. But, to Elizabeth's vexation, she soon observed that he only covered his face so as to conceal it from Helene; from behind his hand he stared the whole time fixedly at Elizabeth, following her every motion. She shuddered beneath those eyes which, usually so dull and expressionless, always burned with a peculiar fire when he looked at her. Under this hateful ordeal she often had to exercise great self-control in order to play correctly.

Helene apparently had no suspicion of the cunning which Hollfeld had employed to attain his end. She often stopped playing for awhile and conversed with him, that is, she talked herself, and, usually, very well. She listened to his monosyllabic replies,—which were empty and foolish enough,—as if they were the words of an oracle wherein more meaning than met the ear was to be found.

He always departed a few minutes before the end of the lesson. The first time that he did so, Elizabeth discovered him from one of the hall windows that commanded an extensive view of the park, standing waiting at the entrance of the forest-path, by which she must pass. She defeated his intention, not without secret self-gratulation, by paying a visit of an hour to Miss Mertens, who received her with open arms; and she grew so fond of the governess that she never passed the door of her room without entering for an hour's quiet talk.

Miss Mertens was almost always depressed and sad. She saw that her stay at Lindhof was becoming impossible. The baroness, suddenly deprived of her sovereign authority and its consequent manifold occupations, was often bored nearly to death. She was obliged to wear her mask of gentleness and content while she was with her relatives, which was hard enough, and therefore all her ill humour had to be pent up within the locked doors of her own apartment. But she never vented it upon Bella, for, looking upon her child more as a born baroness than as a daughter, she restrained herself; nor upon her old waiting-maid, for whom she had, no one knew why, what the old steward Lorenz called "an ungodly sort of respect." Nor could she scold the lower servants without offending the master of the house, and therefore all her malice was wreaked upon the unfortunate and defenceless governess.

In order to torment her victim most thoroughly, the lady ordered the lessons to be daily conducted beneath her own most illustrious eyes. In presence of the pupil, the methods of the teacher were perpetually analyzed and criticised. It was no wonder that Bella did not improve under such instructions, and her nerves, too, were sure to be ruined, for Miss Mertens had the most disagreeable voice in teaching in the world,—how, too, could the child be expected to be graceful while she had constantly before her eyes the angular, clumsy manner in which her governess held her book and turned over the leaves, etc.? In history, Miss Mertens' reflections were quite too sentimental, or too plebeian, and, besides, she was so outrageously impertinent "as to have opinions of her own." In some cases the lesson was deliberately interrupted; the baroness placed herself in the teacher's chair, and the governess was obliged to listen reverentially to a lecture full of supercilious scorn and aristocratic arrogance. If the lady needed support, the chaplain, Herr Möhring, was sent for. And then, the nettle-stings of her discourse vanished into insignificance by the side of the cruelty with which the unappreciated martyr invoked upon the head of the wretched governess all the gall of his suppressed sermons. The baroness must have known that the chaplain's French was execrable,—but she requested him to be present during the French hour that he might correct Miss Mertens' accent. Bella's improvement was forgotten in the overflow of her mother's petty malice.

Sometimes Miss Mertens would declare, with tears, that only love for her mother, who looked to her for support, induced her to submit to this martyrdom. The old lady was almost entirely dependent upon the exertions of her daughter, and therefore any change of situation was very undesirable in view of the pecuniary loss which must attend it But however depressed her spirits might be, her gentle face brightened whenever Elizabeth knocked at the door, and asked, in her sweet, fresh accents, if she might come in. At sight of the young girl all her care and anxiety took flight, and as they sat together on the little sofa by the window they had many a happy hour, and the poor governess seemed to live over again her own youthful days, and Elizabeth gained not a little from the fund of knowledge and riper experience of her more mature friend.

These brief afternoon visits had also a secret charm for Elizabeth, which she would not for the world have confessed, and which, nevertheless, caused her heart to throb quickly, and an undefined sensation of mingled joy and anxiety to possess her as she knocked at the door.

The windows of Miss Mertens' room looked out upon a large court-yard, which Elizabeth used to call the convent garden,—it lay so retired and quiet, encircled by its four high walls. Some spreading lindens cast their green shade upon the rich grassy soil, only intersected here and there by narrow paved paths. In the centre of the space was a fountain, which supplied the house with delicious water, and upon the edge of the large basin several marble figures were reposing their white limbs, bathed in the green light that broke through the overhanging trees. When the sun poured his fierce rays, like melted lead, upon the open parts of the park and garden, this spot was always refreshingly cool. A door upon the ground-floor, leading from the court-yard directly into Herr von Walde's library, almost always stood open. Now and then he himself would issue from it, and pace to and fro with folded arms. What thoughts lay hidden behind that fine white forehead, when, after walking thus for awhile, with his head sunk upon his breast, he suddenly raised it, as if roused from some delightful dream! Miss Mertens often remarked that he seemed to have returned from his travels much altered.

Before his departure, she said, Herr von Walde's face had seemed to her like that of a statue, so serious and immovable; and although she had always known him to be a man of genuine nobility of character, she had been oppressed when near him by the icy coldness of his manner. Now it seemed to her as if some revivifying hand had passed over his nature; even his step was lighter and more elastic, and she would maintain that, in his pacings to and fro in the court yard, a smile frequently broke over his face, as if he saw, in imagination, some vision that delighted him. While she talked thus, Miss Mertens would smile and declare mysteriously that he must certainly have brought home some very agreeable memories with him, and that she could not refrain from suspecting that matters at Lindhof would soon wear a different aspect. She never noticed the involuntary start of her young friend when she arrived at this conclusion, and Elizabeth was equally unaware of it, for the pang that she felt at such an idea, made her utterly incapable of controlling her external behaviour.