“Oh, don’t send me away, don’t send me away!” she cried as soon as he entered.
He saw that Cornelli was trembling all over from fear and excitement. “I cannot endure this,” he said to himself, and seizing his hat ran out of the house.
Martha was sitting in her peaceful little chamber, busy with her mending and thinking about Cornelli. She was wondering what would happen now that she was again left alone with her father. She wondered if the old days would come back, or if something new was going to be done for Cornelli’s education. The door was suddenly flung open and Mr. Hellmut entered.
“Oh, Martha, I do not know what to do,” he said to her in a perturbed manner. “You simply have to help me. You knew my wife and you know my child and love her; and besides, she is attached to you. Tell me what has come over her. Since when has she been so frightfully stubborn? Was the child always that way, or has she only grown more stubborn lately? Have you noticed how she has changed in my absence?”
“There is nothing so very much the matter with Cornelli, Mr. Hellmut. Cornelli is not an ill-natured child, I am sure of that. But won’t you take a seat, Director?” Martha interrupted her speech, placing a chair now here and now there for her visitor, who was running excitedly to and fro. But he refused, for he was too restless to settle down.
“It was really a very abrupt and sudden change for the child, and it was hard for her to have everything so different all at once,” Martha said. “Even an older child might have become shy under those conditions, and Cornelli is still very young. It is hard for a small plant to have too much done for it all at once and too suddenly; it has to have time to develop, and the better the plant the more carefully it should be tended.”
“I hope you are not trying to insinuate that it was not good for Cornelli to at last get into the right hands,” said Mr. Hellmut, standing still in the middle of the room. “I have to reckon it as a great blessing that she was thrown with ladies of culture and refinement, who could awaken in her everything that was good, noble and fine, and could teach her many things. My Cornelia would have done this herself, above all others, for she was in all those things the most striking example. The child has not a trace of her, not even in her looks; everything is lost that used to remind me of her.”
“Oh, Mr. Hellmut, if I might be allowed to say anything else, I would only add one word,” Martha replied calmly. “I have always found that a little love goes further than many good rules. I know that a young child can be frightened by harsh words more than grown-up people realize. Afterwards they cannot understand the cause of the shy behavior which is the result. Cornelli has not lost her mother’s eyes, only one cannot see them under her hanging fringes.”
“Yes, that’s it, Martha, this horrible disfigurement, this obstinacy which holds fast to it all. The shy, spiritless manner, the absolutely changed ways of the child hurt and worry me so. It takes away all my joy and all my courage and paralyzes all hope for the future. It has absolutely spoiled my life.”
The visitor had gotten more and more stirred up as he went on. “So I shall help her in the only way I know of: I shall send her to a boarding school. I just told her about it and she acted as if she were absolutely desperate. I simply cannot look upon her terrible despair. I actually feel as if my Cornelia could have no peace in Heaven if she heard her child’s supplications.”