At this time the landed proprietor, who was formerly mentioned, and who had been attached to Francisca since she was sixteen years of age, again made her an offer of marriage. He was rich, high-principled, kind-hearted, and well-educated. She knew also that her parents had much wished her to marry him. But Theodore required her care, and she determined never to forsake him. She had just finished the letter declining the offer so handsomely made, and saying that she had resolved never to marry, when the lady with whom Theodore boarded, and who supposed her to be a relation of his, sent a pressing message to her begging her to come immediately. She hurried to the house, hoping that some favourable change had suddenly taken place, and that Theodore would be restored to reason. But there was no such joy in store for her.
She found him sitting in a corner of his room playing at cat's-cradle with some twine and his long, wasted fingers; so eagerly engaged was he on his infantine diversion, that he scarcely raised his vacant eyes as she entered. His gait was slouching, and his clothes hung loose about him. Oh, how different from the Theodore of former days!
His hostess was sitting at work in the same room, and looking extremely cross. A letter and a parcel lay on the table, beside which stood a little boy, whose inquisitive and half-frightened glances wandered round first to the strange man, then to the unknown ladies, and lastly, to an elderly woman in a foreign dress, who was sitting near the stove, and who said a few words to him in a foreign language, apparently bidding him do something he was not inclined to do, as he shook his little head; he seemed bewildered by the scene around him. Francisca also stood as one bewildered, but the lady of the house proceeded at once to explain things to her as far as she could. She told her that the foreign woman had informed her, in bad German, that she was the wife of the captain of a small trading vessel from Revel, who had been requested to take charge of the little boy and deliver him to his relations, the address given being only that of Dr. Theodore Ancker, Copenhagen. All the child's expenses had been paid. The woman had conscientiously tried to find out Theodore, and the lady in whose house he lived had detained her until she could send for Francisca.
The letter contained but a very few words; it was signed 'Aurora.' The child's name was Alexander, and he was three years of age. His mother sent him to take his chance in the world, as she could no longer maintain him, and she entreated Theodore to take care of him, as she was now no longer a burden upon his means or a sharer in his wealth. Not a syllable was mentioned of her own fate--not an address or reference to her own place of abode given. In a postscript it was stated that the child understood Danish.
Francisca's determination was soon taken. Although the child was certainly not Theodore's son--although he was the image of his mother--of that Aurora who had blasted her happiness--she resolved to give a home to the deserted and helpless little stranger, and that very night the little Alexander slept comfortably in a cot prepared for him, and placed close to her own couch. The same night she opened the small box which held all that had been bestowed upon the poor child by his parents. In addition to his scanty wardrobe, there was a little parcel containing some papers in the Russian language--certificates of the child's baptism and vaccination--and below these lay a miniature. It was Theodore's likeness, the same that had formerly belonged to Francisca, which she had afterwards returned to him, and which had now passed from Aurora's possession once more into hers, and rendered its unconscious little bearer dear to her. She gazed at it long, as if comparing the likeness of what he once had been with the ruin he now was. Days long gone by arose vividly before her; she pressed the miniature to her lips, and then put it away along with her own--with the likeness of herself which Theodore had never seen. It seemed to her as if the meeting of the two portraits after so long a separation were the type of a future meeting between Theodore and herself in that bright spirit-world which shall haply be disclosed when this mortal scene has vanished for ever. She knelt by Alexander's bed, kissed the innocent child who had brought the treasure to her, and who had himself been thrown on her compassion, and at the same time she vowed she would be a mother to him.
But her adoption of him gave rise to many reports. Some said he was a poor person's child, to whom she had taken a fancy; others, that he was her own son, whom she had till then kept concealed in the country. Her relations, with the exception of my mother, were the most ill-natured. They took great pains to find out who could have been the boy's father, and finally had the folly to confer his paternity upon her old lover, the poor deranged doctor, whom she visited so often.
'Well, there was not such folly in that belief, after all,' said Arnold. 'For want of a better, I think we must accept this parentage for the youngster; for the story of a boy three years old travelling over from Russia, as if he had fallen from the moon, is not at all credible.'
'But I can swear to the truth of it,' said Rudolph. 'Do you doubt my word?'
'I do not doubt your word in the slightest degree,' replied Arnold; 'that is to say, I do not doubt that you believe what you have been telling us. But I think it likely that your mother kindly got up this pretty story, and impressed it on your mind to hide your cousin's faux pas.'
'You judge of other people's principles by the rectitude of your own, I presume,' said Rudolph, laughing. 'But to continue:'