"No, my child, I repeat it, your mother was much too wise, much too just, to wish such a thing; she was too happy in her own marriage to wish her children—But, mon Dieu, I am exciting myself quite uselessly; you have such a totally false conception of this promise."
"Klaus told me so himself, Aunt Rosamond," declared the girl, in a tone which made contradiction impossible.
Aunt Rosamond was silent; she knew well that all talking would be vain, and that nothing in the world could convince Anna Maria that any object worthy of love beside her beloved brother could exist. "Nous verrons, ma petite," thought she, "you will not be spared the experience either!"
And now her thoughts wandered far back into the past, to the night when Anna Maria was born. A terrible night! And as they passed on, there came a day still more terrible; in the heavy wooden cradle, adorned with crests, lay, indeed, the sweetly sleeping child, but the mother's eyes had closed forever, not, however, without first looking, with a fervid, anguished expression, at the little creature that must go through life without a mother's love! And beside her bed had knelt a boy of fifteen, who had to promise over and over again to love the little sister, and protect and shield her.
How often had Aunt Rosamond told this to the child as she grew up; how often described to her how she had been baptized by her mother's coffin, how her brother had held her in his arms and pressed her so closely to him, and wept so bitterly. Indeed, indeed, there was not another brother like Klaus von Hegewitz, that Aunt Rosamond knew best of all.
She remembered how he had watched for nights at the child's bed when she lay ill with measles; with what unwearied patience he had borne with her whims, now even as then; how carefully he had marked out a course of instruction and selected teachers for her, looked up lectures for her, read and rode with her, and did everything that the most careful parental love alone can do, and even more—much more! Indeed, Anna Maria knew nothing of a parent's love; the father had always been a peculiar person, especially so after the death of his wife: it almost seemed as if he could not love the child whose life had cost a life. He was rarely at home; half the year he lived in Berlin, coming back to the old manor-house only at the hunting season. But never alone; he was always accompanied by a young man, a Baron Stürmer, owner of the neighboring estate of Dambitz, and two years older than Klaus.
It was a singular friendship which had existed between these two men. Hegewitz, well on in the sixties, gloomy and unsociable, and from his youth distrustful of every one, and not even amiable toward his own children, was affable only to his friend, so much younger. To this moment Aunt Rosamond distinctly remembered the pale, nobly-formed face with the fiery brown eyes and the dark hair. How gratefully she remembered him! He had been the only one who understood how to mediate between father and son, the only one who, with admirable firmness, had again and again led the struggling little girl to her father; and he did all this out of that incomprehensible friendship. The two used to play chess together late into the night; they rode and hunted together; and still one other passion united them—they collected antiquities.
They searched the towns and villages for miles about for old carved chests, clocks, porcelain, and pictures, and would dispute all night as to whether a certain picture, bought at an auction, was by this or that master, whether it was an original or a copy. They often remained away for days on their excursions, and the treasures they won were then artistically arranged in a tower-room—"a regular rag-shop," Aunt Rosamond had once said in banter. "I only wonder they don't get me too for this 'Collection Antique.'" After the death of Hegewitz this really valuable collection was found to be made over, by will, to Baron Stürmer, "because Klaus did not understand such things." Stürmer accepted the bequest, but he had it appraised by a person intelligent in such matters, and paid the value to the heirs. Klaus von Hegewitz refused to accept the sum, and so the two men agreed to found an almshouse for the two villages of Bütze and Dambitz.
That had happened ten years ago, and the collecting furor of the old gentleman had borne good results.
Soon after his death, Baron Stürmer went away on a journey; he had long wished to travel, and had deferred his cherished plan only on his old friend's account. His first goals had been Italy, Constantinople, and Greece; he went to Egypt, he visited South America, Norway and Sweden, and had travelled through Russia and the Caucasus. No one knew where he was staying at present. He had written seldom of late years, at last not at all; but his memory still lived in Bütze. Only Anna Maria no longer spoke of him; indeed, she scarcely remembered him now: she was just eight years old when he went away. Only this she still knew: that Uncle Stürmer had often taken her by the hand and led her to her father, and that at such times her heart had always beaten more quickly from fear. Anna Maria had stood in real awe of her father, and when he died and was buried, not a tear flowed from the child's eyes. Her entire affection belonged to her brother, as she used to say, full of pride and love for him.