"Yes, quite unprejudiced!" answered Aunt Rikchen, "when you take every earthly opportunity of flattering him and buttering him up till he is as proud as the grand Turk! And though Philip may sometimes be a little reckless and selfish, he has always been kind to me; and only yesterday when I met him in the Potsdamerstrasse he said: 'If ever you are in want of money, aunt, come to me; you can have as much as ever you want.' I do not want any, thank heaven! for he supplies me with all that is needful; but a nephew, who, meeting his poor old aunt in the Potsdamerstrasse in broad daylight, offers her any amount of money, is no robber, and no murderer, say I. And now you must manage to meet him; he does not generally inquire after or interest himself in any one, but he has always taken the greatest interest in you, and always marks your journeys on the map with a red pencil. And that is just as it should be. I don't mean about the pencil, but that clinging to one's family. I could go through fire and water for him! for him! for all of them, it is all the same to me; either a man is a Schmidt or he is not a Schmidt--he has either got the Schmidt blood in his veins or he has not. Perhaps that is rather a narrow view to take--borné, don't you call it? but it is my view, and I shall live and die in it. And when I am dead and buried you will then begin to see what a good old aunt I was to you all. But what I wanted to say was that Ferdinanda and Justus were talking of going to the exhibition to-day and wanted to know whether you would go with them? Of course I shall stop at home. I don't understand these sort of things; in fact, I don't understand anything."
The spectacles had fallen to their lowest possible point; the needles worked with inconceivable rapidity. Reinhold fancied he still heard them clicking even when he found himself in the garden, into which a glass-door led from the dining-room.
CHAPTER VI.
He drew a deep breath. Here in the open air the sun shone so brilliantly, while the house seemed so full of dismal ghosts.
"Good heavens!" said he to himself; "can there be a more terrible lot than to go creeping and groping through life with unenlightened mind, like my poor aunt here!--always dreading treachery and deceit, sin and sorrow; seeing no more of the sunshine, of all the might and beauty of the world, than if she were blind, like that poor girl!"
A young girl was groping her way along the iron railing that divided the courtyard from the garden, which was on rather a higher level. She moved with slow and careful steps, holding in her uplifted left hand a plate, on which appeared to be slices of bread-and-butter, and with her right hand outstretched lightly touched every third rail. It was by these careful movements that Reinhold recognised the blind girl, even before she stood still, and, slightly raising her head, turned her face towards the sun. The sun was very powerful, but her eyelids never even quivered. She had opened her eyes wide, as a flower turns its open petals to the sun, and lovely as a flower was the expression of the sweet, pure, child-like features.
"Poor poor Cilli!" murmured Reinhold.
He had remembered the name from last night's conversation, and that the blind girl was the daughter of Kreisel, Uncle Ernst's head clerk. And the man who had been standing in the doorway of the low building a little way off, which from the desks in the windows seemed to be the counting-house, and now came towards the girl across the intervening part of the courtyard, must be her father--a little old man with a perfectly bald head, that shone in the sun like a ball of white marble.
The blind girl instantly recognised his footsteps. She turned her head, and Reinhold saw the two thick blonde plaits, as they fell so far over her shoulders that the ends were concealed by the stonework supporting the railing. She nodded repeatedly to the newcomer, and when he was by her, bent her head that he might kiss her forehead, and held up the plate with both hands, from which he took a slice of bread-and-butter and began to eat at once, at intervals saying a few words, which Reinhold in the distance could not catch, any more than he could the girl's answers. But he could have sworn that they were words of love that were thus exchanged, as from time to time the old man stroked the blonde hair with his left hand (the right was occupied with the bread-and-butter), while a happy smile played upon the girl's sweet face, which he now saw in profile. And now the old gentleman had finished his second slice of bread-and-butter, and taking a white handkerchief out of his pocket, he shook it out of its folds and wiped his mouth with it, then refolded it in its original creases and put it back in his pocket, while the girl, as before, presented her forehead for a kiss. The old man hobbled away, and stood in the door waving his hand; the blind girl waved her hand and nodded in return till he disappeared, exactly as if she could see what she really only heard with her acute ear, or calculated by the time it took, it being evidently a daily habit. Then again she raised her eyes to the sun with the self-same expression of child-like innocence on the pure face; and taking in her right hand the plate, which before she had held in her left hand, retraced her steps as she had come, lightly touching every third rail with the tips of her fingers.
Reinhold had observed the whole scene without moving. The poor blind girl could not see him, and the old man had not once looked that way.