During all these changing scenes we had not seen Katrina. Under no circumstances, after that first melancholy visit, would we willingly have seen her again. At long intervals we heard from her. We knew there were three fat babies, whose infant charms, hitherto unparalleled, were caricatured in snapshots sent us by their proud mother. Jessica looked at these, groaned, and dropped them into the dark corners of our study. Our visits home were rare, and there had been no time in any of them for a second call at the home of Professor von Heller. Seven years after our return from Europe, however, Jessica decided that she needed a rest and a summer in her native air. Moreover, she had just given Professor Adams his final conge, and he had left her in high dudgeon. I sapiently inferred that Jessica had found the experience something of a strain. As Jessica acted as expeditiously in other matters as in blighting lives, I need hardly add that we were transported to our home town with gratifying despatch. We had stepped from the train at the end of our journey before a satisfactory excuse for remaining behind had occurred to me, and it was obviously of little avail to mention it then. Twenty-four hours after the newspapers had chronicled the exciting news of our arrival, Katrina called on us.
We gasped as we looked at her. Was this, indeed, Katrina—this rosy, robust, glowing, radiant German with shining eyes and with vitality flowing from her like the current of an electric battery? I looked at Jessica's faded complexion, the tired lines in her face, the white threads in her dark hair, and my heart contracted suddenly. I knew how I looked—vastly more tired, more faded than Jessica, for I had started from a point nearer to these undesirable goals. We three were about the same age. There were six months at the most between us. Who would believe it to look at us together?
Katrina seized us in turn, and kissed us on both cheeks. To me there was something life-giving in the grasp of her strong, firm hands, in the touch of her cool, soft lips. She insisted that we come to see her and at once. When would we come? We had no excuse now, she pointed out, and if we needed a rest, the farm—her home—was the best place in the world for rest. With a faint access of hope I heard her. The farm? Had she, then, moved? No, she was still in the same place, Katrina explained, but the city had lurched off in another direction, leaving her and Hans and the children undisturbed in their peaceful pastoral life.
"Ka-tri-na!"
I almost jumped, but it was only a memory, helped on by my vivid fancy. I had tried to picture the peaceful pastoral life, but all that responded was the echo of that distant summons. Jessica, however, was explaining that we would come—soon, very soon—next week—yes, Tuesday, of course. Jessica subsequently inquired of me, with the strong resentment of the person who is in the wrong, how I expected her to get us out of it. It was something that had to be done. Obviously, she said, it was one of those things to do and have done with.
She discoursed languidly about Katrina in the interval between the promise and the visit.
"Well! Of course she's well," drawled Jessica. "She's the kind that wouldn't know it if she wasn't well. For the rest, she's phlegmatic, has no aspirations, and evidently no sensitiveness. All she asks is to wait on that man and his children, and from our glimpse of Hans we can safely surmise that he is still gratifying that simple aspiration. Heavens! don't let's talk about it! It's too horrible!"
Tuesday came, and we made our second visit to Katrina's—fourteen years to a month from the time of our first. Again the weather was perfect, but the years and professional cares had done their fatal work, and our lagging spirits refused to respond to the jocund call of the day. Again we approached, with an absurd shrinking, the bleak old house. The bleak old house was not there; nay, it was there, but transformed. It was painted red. Blossoming vines clambered over it; French windows descended to meet its wide verandas; striped awnings sheltered its rooms from the July sun. The lawns, sloping down to a close-clipped hedge, were green and velvety. The iron dog was gone. A great hammock swung in the corner of the veranda, and in it tumbled a fat, pink child and a kitten. The fat child proved that all was not a dream. It was Katrina reborn—the Katrina of that first day in school, twenty years and more ago. Rather unsteadily we walked up the gravel path, rather uncertainly we rang the bell. A white-capped maid ushered us in. Yes, Frau von Heller was at home and expecting the ladies. Would the ladies be gracious enough to enter? The ladies would. The ladies entered.
The partition between two of the rooms had been taken down and the entire floor made over. There was a wide hall, with a great living-room at the right. As we approached it we heard the gurgle of a baby's laugh, Katrina's answering ripple, and the murmur of a bass voice buzzing like a cheerful bumblebee. Our footsteps were deadened by the thick carpet, and our entrance did not disturb for a moment the pleasing family tableau on which we gazed. The professor was standing with his baby in his arms, his profile toward the door, facing his wife, who was laughing up at him. The infant had grasped a handful of his father's wavy gray hair and was making an earnest and gratifyingly successful effort to drag it out by the roots. Von Heller's face, certainly ten years younger than when we saw it last, was alight with pride in this precocious offspring. Seeing us, he tossed the baby on his shoulder, holding it there with one accustomed arm, and came to meet us, his wife close by his side. They reached us together, but it was the professor who gave us our welcome. This time he needed no introduction.
"My wife's friends, Miss Lawrence and Miss Gifford, is it not?" He smiled, extending his big hand to each of us in turn, and giving our hands a grip the cordiality of which made us wince. "It is a pleasure. But you will excuse this young man, is it not?" He lowered the baby to his breast as he spoke, while his wife fell upon our necks in hospitable greeting. "He has no manners, this young man," added the father, sadly, when Katrina had thus expressed her rapture in our arrival. "He would yell if I put him down, and he has lungs—ach, but he has lungs!"