"Yet he himself is always thinking of Wohlfart," cried the cousin from her window-niche. "This very day he was cross-examining old Sturm about Karl and the property. I declare I don't understand the man."
"I understand him," sighed Sabine, and sat down again to her work. The cousin pouted: "You and he are just alike; there is no speaking to you on certain subjects." And she left the room.
Sabine left the room. The fire crackled in the stove, the pendulum of the clock swung backward and forward monotonously. "Ever so! ever so!" it seemed to say. Those pictures of her parents had been looking calmly down upon her, their last child, for many years. Her youth was passing away silent, serious, still as those painted forms. Sabine bowed her head and listened. Hush! little fairy steps in the corner of the room. Hark again! a merry laugh from a child's lip, and the steps tripped nearer, and a curly head was laid on her knee, and two little arms stretched out lovingly to clasp her neck. She bent down and kissed the air, and listened again to those blessed sounds which swelled her heart with rapture, and brought tears of joy to her eyes. Alas! she but grasped at empty air, and nothing was real but the tears that fell into her lap.
So sat she long till twilight closed in. The vibrations of the pendulum seemed to fail, the fire grew low in the stove, the pictures dim on the walls, the room dark and lonely.
At that moment old Sturm's hammer was heard outside. Every stroke fell strong, vigorous, decided. It sounded through court-yard and house. Sabine rose: "So it shall be," cried she. "I have twice hoped and feared, twice it has been an illusion, now it is over. My life is to be devoted to him to whom I am all. I can not bring to him the husband he hoped for, and no band of children will twine their arms about his neck. Yes, things will go on with us as they have done hitherto, always more silent, always more empty. But me shall he have, and my whole life. My brother, thou shalt never again feel with regret that thy life and mine are wanting in joyousness!"
She caught up her little key-basket, and hurried into her brother's room. Meanwhile the cousin was making up her mind to pay Mr. Baumann a visit.
Between the cousin and Mr. Baumann there had long been a silent understanding, and fate now willed that he should be her neighbor at the dinner-table. When the cousin glanced back over her succession of neighbors, she came to the conclusion that they had lost in sprightliness what they had gained in moral worth. Fink was rather profane, but very amusing; Anton had a certain equipoise of goodness and pleasantness; Baumann was the best of them all, but also the most silent. Her conversation with him, though edifying enough, was never exciting. On Mondays, indeed, they had a mutual interest in discussing the Sunday's sermon, but there was another tie between them, and that was Anton.
The good lady could not account for what she called his unnatural departure. Whether the fault was that of the principal or the clerk, she could not take upon herself to decide, but she was firmly convinced that the step was unnecessary, unwise, and injurious to all parties; and she had done all toward bringing the wanderer back into the firm that tender hints and feminine persuasions can do to counteract manly perversity. When first Anton left, she had taken every opportunity of mentioning and praising him, both to the merchant and to Sabine; but she met with no encouragement. The merchant always answered dryly, sometimes rudely, and Sabine invariably turned the subject or was silent. The cousin was not, however, to be taken in by that. Those embroidered curtains had let in a flood of light upon her mind, in which Sabine stood plainly revealed to her gaze. She knew that Mr. Baumann was the only one of his colleagues with whom Anton kept up a correspondence, and to-day she resolved to call him to her aid; therefore she took up the report of a benevolent society lent her by the future missionary, and, knocking at Mr. Baumann's door, handed it in to him. "Very good," said she, on the threshold; "Heaven will bless such a cause. Pray set me down as a subscriber for the future." Mr. Baumann thanked her in the name of the poor. The cousin went on. "What do you hear of late from your friend Wohlfart? He seems to have vanished from the face of the earth; even old Sturm has nothing to say about him."
"He has a great deal to do," said the reticent Baumann.
"Nay, I should think not more than here. If occupation was all he wanted, he might have remained where he was."