If a sensitive nature like Fräulein Duff's had needed any further explanation of the meaning of these caresses and these tears, she found it now in the appearance of a tall form that stood in the doorway and looked at the group with flashing eyes. She reached out both arms to him, and cried out, oblivious of by-gone troubles:
"Richard, did I not tell you, 'Seek faithfully and you will find?'"
This speech, which the worthy lady had delivered in the tone of a herald announcing the result of a tournament, fell like a bombshell among the company. The two Eleonoras unclasped each other and looked in each other's face, and the second let her head fall upon the shoulder of the first, murmuring something of which I only caught the words--"the traitor!"
This was perhaps, all things considered, a moving picture, but a frightful one was offered us by the Born. The foreboding of imminent misfortune had been lying upon her low wrinkled brow, her hollow rouged cheeks, in her glassy snake-like eyes; she had seen it coming on all day. In vain had she tried with her maternal arms to protect her dear son against the shafts of ill-temper which the proud angry girl launched against him; in vain had Arthur tried to quaff from the bowl of pine-apple punch fresh courage in so sore a strait, and new fortitude to sustain him under his trials--the bolt had fallen, and the wreck was here before her eyes, before the eyes of the Born Baroness Kippenreiter, the mother of the most charming of sons, the aunt of this ungrateful creature. It was too much! The dethroned queen sprang to her feet, trembling in every limb, hurled--she was speechless with indignation--a crushing look at Hermine, who threw herself, laughing, into my arms, and tottered to the room where the bowed-down father was watching by the bed of his hopeful heir, whose wretched soul was not in a condition to comprehend what he and his house had irrevocably lost.
Away sad visions, and disturb not the bright memory of that happy evening. I will not banish you altogether--nay, I know that I cannot if I would; but crowd not upon me thus! Strive not to make me believe that it is for you that we live. You must be it is true, and well for him that comprehends it, and keeps in his firm breast a fearless laugh to mock you away when you will not be thrust aside. You must be; but it is not for the sake of the black earth that clings to its tender roots that we take up the rose of love, bear it home in our bosom, plant it in a calm sunny place, and watch and tend and treasure it as best we can. Who knows how long we can!
CHAPTER XVIII.
Who knows how long we can! Perhaps not long; perhaps but a short, far too short a time. It is a melancholy word, but unhappily the right word to open the record of this part of my life which I begin with a hesitating hand. It was not my intention, when I determined to write this narrative, to cast any further gloom upon the spirits of my readers, who have in all likelihood themselves borne their own share of life's sorrows. It was not my aim to dampen their courage in life's battles, when I related how the youth had erred by his folly, and how he suffered the penalty; I rather hoped to infuse into them the spirit of delight in active life, the faculty of enduring and forbearing; and thus we may together live over in memory the hard fortune which was yet to be the lot of the man. The reader, who has by this time perhaps grown to be my friend, may follow me without fear on my path of life.
And first into the room of the commerzienrath, which I entered the following morning at ten o'clock with a heart possibly not perfectly at ease, but not at all fearful. But I would not have advised any timid person to cross this man's path this morning, as he ran up and down his room like a madman, then stopped before me and surveyed me with infuriated looks, again raged about the room, and then stopped and cried:
"So! You want to marry my daughter, do you?"
"It is a wish which had nothing alarming about it ten years ago, Herr Commerzienrath. Do you not remember, on the deck of the Penguin, the day we went out to the oyster-beds?"