Chapter VI (1)

After this Clement never made a stay of any length in his father's house. Each time he came, he found him harsher and more intolerant. His mother was tender and loving as before, but more reserved: Marlene was calm, but mute whenever they became earnest in discussion. At such times she would rather avoid being present.

On a bright day towards the end of autumn, we find Clement again in the small room where, as a boy, he had spent those weeks of convalescence. One of his friends and fellow-students, had accompanied him home. They had gone through their course at the University, and had just returned from a longer tour than usual, during which Wolf had fallen ill, and had desired to come hither to recover in the quiet of village life. Clement could not but acquiesce, though of all the young men he knew, Wolf was the one, he thought, least likely to please his father. But, contrary to his expectations, the stranger prudently and cleverly contrived to adapt himself perfectly to the opinions of the old couple; especially winning the mother's good will, by the merry interest he manifested in household matters. He gave her good advice, and even succeeded in curing her of some little ailment with a very simple remedy. He had been preparing himself to follow his uncle in his business as apothecary: an avocation far beneath that for which his natural talents and acquirements would have fitted him; but he was by nature indolent, and was quite contented to settle down, and eat his cake betimes.

Mentally, he never had had anything in common with Clement; and on first coming to the vicarage, he had felt himself in an atmosphere so oppressive and uncongenial, that he would have left it, after the most superficial recovery, had not the blind girl, from the first moment he saw her, appeared to him as a riddle worth his reading.

She had avoided him as much as possible; the first time he had taken her hand she had withdrawn it, with unaccountable uneasiness, and had entirely lost the usual composure of her manner. Yet he would remain in her society for hours, studying her method of apprehending things, and with a playful kind of importunity which it was not easy to take amiss, taking note of her ways and means of communication with the outer world.

He could not understand why Clement appeared to care for her so little--and Clement would avoid her more than ever when he saw her in company with Wolf. He would turn pale then, and escape to the distant forest, where the villagers would often meet him, plunged in most disconsolate meditations.

One evening, when he was returning from a long discontented walk, where he had gone too far and lost himself, he met Wolf in a state of more than natural excitement. He had been paying a long visit to Marlene, who had fascinated him more than usual; he had then found his way to the village tavern, where he had drunk enough of the light wine of the country to make him glad of a cool walk among the fields in the fresh evening air.

"I say!" he called to Clement. "It may be a good while yet, before you are so fortunate as to get rid of me; that little blind witch of yours is a pretty puzzle to me. She is cleverer than a dozen of our town ladies, who only use their eyes to ogle God and man--and then that delicious way she has of snubbing me, is a master-piece in itself."

"You may be glad if she ends by making you a little tamer;" said Clement shortly.

"Tamer! that I shall never be--and that magnificent figure and lovely face of hers are not calculated to make a fellow tame. Don't believe I mean to harm her. Only you know, sometimes, I think if she were to be fond of one, there would be something peculiar in it. A woman who can't see--who can only feel, and feel as no other creature can--I say if such a woman were to fall upon a fellow's neck, I say, the feeling might prove especially pleasant to them both."

"And I say, you had better keep your sayings to yourself."

"Why? Where's the harm? what harm would there be in making her fall just a very little bit in love with me, to see how her nerves would carry her through the scrape? In general so much fire finds its safety valve in the eyes, but here----"

"I must beg you to refrain from making any such experiments," flared up Clement. "I tell you very seriously, that I do not choose to see or hear anything of the kind, and so you may act accordingly."

Wolf gave a sidelong look at him, and, taking hold of his arm, said with a laugh: "I do believe you really are in love with the girl, and want to try a few experiments yourself. How long have you been so scrupulous? You have often heard me out, before now, when I have told you what I thought of women."

"Your education is no concern of mine. What have I to do with your unclean ideas? But when I find them soiling one so near and dear to me, one who is twenty times too good for you to breathe the same air, that is what I can and will prevent."

"Oho!" said Wolf tranquilly--"too good you say? too good? It is you who are too good a fellow Clement, far too good! so take yourself away, out of my air, good lad."

He clapped him on the back, and would have moved on--Clement stood still, and turned white; "You will be so good as to explain the meaning of those words;" he said resolutely.

"No such fool; ask others if you wish to know--others may be fond of preaching to deaf ears; I am not."

"What others? What do you mean? Who is it dares to speak slightingly of her? I say who dares?" He held Wolf with an iron grasp.

"Foolish fellow, you are spoiling my walk," he growled, "with your stupid questions; let me go, will you?"

"You do not stir a step until you have given me satisfaction," cried Clement, getting furious.

"Don't I? Go to the bailiff's son if you are jealous! Poor devil! to coax him so, till he was ready to jump out of his skin for her, and then to throw him over! Fie! was it honest? He came to pour out his grievances to me, and I comforted him. She is just what all women are, says I, a coquette. It is my turn now, but we are up to a thing or two, you know, and may not be inclined to let our mouths be stopped, when we would warn other fellows from falling into the same snare."

"Retract those words!" shouted Clement, shaking Wolf's arm in a paroxysm of rage.

"Why retract? if they are true, and I can prove them? Go to! you are but a simpleton!"

"And you a devil."

"Oho! I say, it may be your turn to retract now."

"I won't retract."

"Then I suppose you know the consequences. You shall hear from me as soon as I get to town."

And having thus spoken in cold blood, he turned back to the village. Clement remained standing where he was.

"Villain!--miserable scoundrel!"--fell from his lips; his bosom heaved, a cruel pain had coiled itself about his heart, he flung himself flat upon the ground among the corn, and lay there long, recalling a thousand times each one of those words that had made him feel so furious.

When he came home at a very late hour, he was surprised to find the family still assembled. Wolf was missing. The vicar was pacing violently up and down the room. His wife and Marlene were seated with their work in their laps, much against their custom at so late an hour. On Clement's entrance the vicar stopped, and gravely turned to look at him.

"What have you been doing to your friend?--Here he has packed up and gone, while we were all out walking, leaving a hasty message. When we came home, we only found the man who had come to fetch his things. Have you been quarrelling? else why should he be in such a hurry?"

"We had high words together. I am glad to find that he is gone, and that I shall not have to sleep another night under the same roof with him."

"And what were your angry words about?"

"I cannot tell you, father. I should have been glad to avoid a quarrel, but there are things to which no honest man can listen. I have long known him to be coarse, and careless in feeling, both with regard to himself, and others, but I never saw him as he was to-day."

The vicar looked steadily at his son, and then in a low tone: "How do you mean to settle this quarrel between you?" he asked.

"As young men do;" said Clement gravely.

"And do you know what Christians do, when they have been offended?"

"I know, but I cannot do the same; if he had only offended me, I might easily have forgiven him, but he has insulted one who is very dear to me."

"A woman, Clement?"

"A woman. Yes."

"And you love this woman?"

"I love her;" murmured the young man.

"I thought so," burst out his father. "Yes! you have been corrupted in the town. You are become as the children of this world, who follow wanton wenches, fight for them, and make idols of them; but I tell you, while I live, I shall labour to win you back to God. I will smash your idols. Did the Lord vouchsafe to work a miracle for you, for you to deny him now? Far better have remained in darkness, with those gates closed for ever, through which the devil and all his snares have entered in, and taken possession of your heart!"

The young man had some struggle to suppress his rising passion. "Who gave you the right, father, to suppose my inclinations to be so base?" he said. "Am I degraded, because I am forced to do what is needful in the world we live in, to crush the insolence of the base? There are divers ways of wrestling with the evil one; yours is the peaceful way, for you have the multitude to deal with. I have the individual, and I know that way."

"It is a way you shall not go," hotly returned the father; "I say you shall not trample on God's commandments. He is no son of mine, who would do violence to his brother. I prohibit it with the authority of a parent and a priest. Beware of setting that authority at nought!"

"And so you spurn me from your home;" said Clement gloomily. A pause ensued. His mother, who had burst into tears, now rose, and rushed up to her son. "Mother," he said earnestly, "I must be a man. I cannot be a traitor." He went towards the door, with one look at Marlene, whose poor blind eyes were searching painfully; his mother followed him--she could not speak for sobbing. "Do not detain him, wife," said the vicar, "he is no child of ours, since he refuses to be God's; let him go whither he pleases, to us, he is as dead."

Marlene heard the door close and the vicar's wife fall heavily to the ground, with a cry that came from the depths of her mother's heart. She woke from the trance in which she had been sitting, went to the door, and with an immense exertion, she carried the insensible woman to her bed. The vicar stood at the window and never uttered a word; but his folded hands were trembling violently.

About a quarter of an hour later, a knock came to Clement's door. He opened it and saw Marlene.--She entered quietly. The room was in disorder--she struck her foot against the trunk. "What are you going to do, Clement?"

The stubbornness of his grief softened at once, and he took her hands and pressed them to his eyes which were wet with tears. "I must do it;" he cried, "I have long felt that I have lost his love. Perhaps when I am gone, he may feel that I have never ceased to be his son."

She raised him up, and said; "Do not weep, or I shall never have strength to tell you what I have to say. Your mother would say the same if your father did not prevent her. And even he,--I heard by his voice how difficult he found it to be so hard; yet hard he will remain--for I know him well--he believes that he is serving the Lord by being severe, and serving him best, in sacrificing his own heart."

"And you think the same?"

"No, I don't, Clement.--I don't know much about the world, nor the laws of that opinion that forces a man to fight a duel; but I do know you enough to know that every one of your thoughts and actions--and therefore this duel also--is submitted to the severest test of self-examination. You may owe it to the world, and to her you love; only I think you owe your parents more than either. I do not know the person who has been insulted, and do not quite feel why it should make you so indignant, to be prevented doing this for her. Do not interrupt me. Do not suppose me to be influenced by the fear of losing any remnant of our friendship which you may have retained during the years that have parted us. I would be willing to let her have you all to herself, if she be able to make you happy, but not even for her sake should you do what you are about to do, were she dearer to you than either father or mother. From their house you must not go in anger, at the risk of its being closed to you for ever. Your father is old, and will carry his opinions with him to the grave. If he were to give way to you, it would be at the sacrifice of principles which are the very pith and marrow of his life; and the sacrifice on your side, would be merely, the evanescent estimation in which you believe yourself to be held by strangers. If a woman whom you love, could break with you because you are unwilling to embitter the last years of your father's life, that woman, I say, was never worthy of you."

Her voice failed her; he threw himself on a chair and groaned.

She was still standing by the door, waiting to hear what he would say; and there was a strange look of tension about her brow--she seemed to be listening with her eyes. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, laid his two hands on her shoulders, and cried: "It was for you I would have done this, and now for your sake I will not do it;" and rushing past her, he ran downstairs.

She remained where she was. His last words had thrilled to her very marrow, and a sudden tide of gladness broke over that timid doubting heart of hers. She sat down on the portmanteau trembling all over. "It was for you! for you!"--the words echoed in her ear. She half dreaded his return; if he should not mean what she thought! and how could he mean it?--What was she to him?

She heard him coming upstairs again; in her agitation she rose, and would have left the room, but he met her at the door, and taking her in his arms, he told her all.

"It was I who was blind," he cried, "and you who saw--who saw prophetically. Without you, where should I have been now?--An orphan without a future, without a home; banished from the only hearts I love, and by my own miserable delusions. And now--now they are all my own again; mine and more than I ever believed to be mine--more than I could have trusted myself to possess."

She hung upon his neck in mute devotion; mute for very scorn of the poverty of language. The long repressed fervour of her affection had broken loose, and burned in her silent kiss.

Day dawned upon their happiness. Now he knew what she had so obstinately concealed, and what this very room had witnessed; where now, pledged to each other for life, with a grasp of each other's hands, they parted in the early morning.

In the course of the day a letter came from Wolf, written the night before, from the nearest village. Clement might be at rest, he wrote; he retracted everything; he knew best that what he had said was nonsense. He had spoken in anger and in wine.

It had provoked him to see Clement going about so indifferent and cool, when, with a word, he might have taken possession of such a treasure--and when he saw that Clement really did mean to do so, he had reviled what had been denied to him.

He begged Clement not to think worse of him than he deserved, and to make his excuses to the young girl and to his parents; and not to break with him entirely, and for ever.

When Clement read this to Marlene, she was rather touched: "I can be sorry for him now," she said; "though I always felt uneasy when he was here--and how much he might have spared us both, and spared himself! But I can think of him with charity now--we have so much to thank him for!"--

WALTER'S LITTLE MOTHER.

WALTER'S LITTLE MOTHER.

On a still spring night, that had followed on a stormy day, a young woman sat alone by her little lamp, watching and wakeful, although in every other room of that old house, the lights had been put out above an hour before.

It was in a narrow street of a little northern town, and not a footstep was to be heard, save the watchman's, who stopped from time to time, under the one lighted window, to sing out with especial emphasis, his warning to be careful of fire and light. The casement was not closed, and the lamp flickered in the night wind, that blew chill into the room, stealing as it passed, the fragrance of the hyacinths that were blooming in the window. But the girl did not close the casement; she only drew her large brown shawl still closer about her shoulders, and remained pensively looking over the book on her lap, towards the sleeping town beyond; listening to the clock upon the tower as it struck the successive quarters.

Opposite the deep old arm-chair in which she was reclining, a table had been laid with a clean white cloth, and a little tea-kettle was singing merrily beside a simple supper of cold meats, set out with a dainty neatness that almost amounted to elegance. An arm-chair had been drawn close to the single cover.

There was no other symptom of petticoat government in that large low room. Discolored copper-plates, sketches in oils, fragments of antique marbles, covered the walls, and lay about encumbering the furniture, in artistical confusion. An old stove of green potter; had been crowned by a Corinthian capital, blackened by the smoke and dust of years. Now, at this quiet hour of the night, when the lamp in the centre left the comers of the room in darkness, this motley assemblage almost haunted one. The most incongruous things had been placed so close together, as to make them all look strange.

The clock struck eleven. With a movement of impatience, the young woman rose, and throwing down the little blue volume of which she had been absently turning over the leaves, she went to the window and looked out. Her earliest youth was past, and her countenance bore the stamp of a resolute soul, that has suffered, and struggled, and ended by becoming indifferent to evanescent charms. Yet if you looked longer at that serious face, you could see that such charms had been intended for it when Nature cast those features; but that life and fate had been too hard for her, and blighted their original promise. Eyes and brow were of the purest cut; the contour of cheek and throat was broad and sweeping. Even a slight trace of the small-pox here and there, had not deteriorated from the delicacy of her profile. One breath of youthfulness, of gladness, of carelessness, and that severe mouth would have softened into loveliness.

Even now, her countenance completely changed, as her watchful ear at last discerned the echo of a footstep on the pavement, coming up to the door, and a suppressed voice, humming a valse tune, as the key was being turned in the lock.

"At last!" she murmured, as she drew back from the window; "and late enough;--and what can make him sing? A glass too much, perhaps, and for all my pains and patience, I shall only have to preach him sober."

She listened to the step upon the stairs, it was steady, elastic, noiseless. "Not so bad after all," she said, with a sigh of relief, "but that he should have taken to singing--?"

The door opened, and a fine-grown young fellow of about nineteen came in, with a kindly salutation.

"How are you, little mother?" he said, taking off his cap, and smoothing back the tangles of his thick flaxen hair. "Why did you sit up for me? I told you I should be late. It was our last dancing lesson for the winter, and they made a sort of ball of it. If some of our young ladies and gentlemen had not been of such very tender years, we should have been at it still. But not a few of our partners were prematurely carried off, by their respective nursery maids;--a fact they would not have owned for worlds--and so we had to break up without dancing in the morning. You have been nodding a bit, I hope?"

"Not I, my son," she said, in a quiet tone. "Care keeps mothers awake at home, when grown-up sons and daughters go racketing to balls and parties. However I believe I should have done wiser in going to bed, than in sitting up here with my teapot, waiting for light-footed young gentlemen who, I perceive, have already quenched their thirst at a less insipid tap than my domestic teapot."

"You perceive, do you little mother?" he answered gaily, disposing of his long limbs under the little table as well as their length admitted of; "and how do you perceive that?"

"This how: you never walked home singing in your life before; and we cannot attribute any ordinary cause, to an effort of nature so extraordinary as to produce what it never had. To be sure, the production was accordingly."

He laughed. "What a wonderfully sagacious little mother! your perceptions are correct as far as you see, but you don't see far enough. I confess to some disturbance somewhere, but not in the upper works, as you suppose. His worship the burgermeister's mild punch is brewed with far too careful a consideration of the tender years of upper tertia, to do much mischief among us other fellows. Altogether, the refreshments affect the sober system, and I am afraid your provender here will have to suffer for it I abominate the trash and sweet-stuff they feed a fellow with at parties. Come, little mother, just give us a spoonful more rum in this tea, and cure one giddiness with another. For, as I said before, there is something wrong about me. I _am_ hard hit."

He looked at her in mock distress, with a saucy sparkle in his deep blue eyes. "Walter," she began, in some dismay, "what have you been about? I trust you have not----?"

The young fellow helped himself to a slice of bread and meat, and fell to his supper with a ponderous gravity, that was meant to cover a shade of embarrassment.

"I suppose no man can escape his fate," he said, chewing away with prosaic complacency, "sooner or later, there always must be a first time; and when a fellow comes to be nineteen, it becomes an affair of _amour propre_ to do as others do, and fall in--" he hesitated and she laughed.

"In love?--I do believe this foolish fellow is trying to persuade himself and me, that he has fallen in love!"

"No less;" returned the lad, swallowing the tea she had poured out for him at a gulp; "I am afraid there is every symptom of that fatal malady."

"Most prominent symptoms: a very unusual appetite; and twelve bars of a valse, sung so false, as to make the very muscle model in the corner stop his ears, if he could move his hands. May I enquire to whom these miracles are to be attributed?"

A sly look of mystery came over his bright face; of which indeed the chief charm was this first freshness and frankness of early youth.

"Guess," he said; "you see at present I am too intent on filling my mouth, for any very coherent confession to come out of it."

And he fell to work again, and filled his plate, and cut large pieces off a bright pink ham. She had drawn her arm-chair close to the table, and looked quietly into his eyes.

"As if there were much to guess!--when one has the honor of knowing every one of the young ladies, and more of their giddy partner and his strong points (and his weak ones)--than he himself!--and we know him to be an aspiring young man, for whom the best of all things is but just good enough--and in every thing that beguiles young fools to folly, who is there among our maidens that can vie with the daughter of our most worshipful and puissant Burgermeister?--Did I not lay hands on a certain drawing board a few days ago, that was ornamented with the name of Flora in choicest arabesques?"

"Your tea is strong, little mother, but your prophetic sense is weak;" said the young man with an affectation of pomposity; "of course I do not attempt to deny"--he proceeded with a passing blush--"that I really did at one time admire that smooth-faced little viper, who can slip so cleverly through a thousand things that would pose a man--and besides I may as well confess that I felt less provoked at my own mistakes, because it amused me to persuade myself that it was love that made me stupid, as it has made many a cleverer man before me. But to-night my eyes were opened, and I saw that between us two there never could be any question of love. If a certain muslin dress were but transparent enough for us to look into her left side, we should discover nothing, I lay my life, but a pair of ball-tablets and the last No. of the 'Modes'."

"And may I enquire what there is to justify a young gentleman in harbouring such dire suspicions? Is a helpless young woman to be argued out of her heart, simply because she may not hold it ready when certain persons ask her."

"Proofs--we have proofs of what we advance;" returned the lad very seriously; "I do not profess to be any very extraordinary judge of character--in fact I suffered myself to be made a fool of for a time. All this winter, you should have seen how this little Dalilah walked round my beard,--to use a figure of speech, for this trifle of yellow down is barely enough to swear by yet.

"Though I do dance deplorably, and never know whether it is a valse or schottisch, or whether I am to begin with the right foot or the left, still I was the acknowledged favorite. I was the eldest and biggest of the company, and might be looked upon as a full-grown man and champion." "A pike among the small fry;" observed his listener.

"As you please; she took me as full measure, and I let her--There _are_ feminine perceptions," and he smiled good-humouredly, "which would fail to discern my manhood, even if I were to grow right through the ceiling, and look down upon them from the mazes of a bristling beard."

"Certainly," she retorted; "you are my own little Walter, and will be, if you live to be a grandfather. I shall always feel maternally responsible for your faults and follies--and there is every prospect of your keeping these maternal feelings in practice to the last day of your life."

"Very possibly;" and he laughed again. "But to-day I really did do you credit, I assure you, and was an honor to my education. Our ball queen, you must know, proud minx! found me all at once too mean for even the meanest services of her slaves. There was a young gentleman from the bar, who had been so condescending as to join us. When I came in, with my plain frock-coat and cotton gloves, he was pleased to take his eye-glass, and to stare at me from head to foot. He was in tails, and light-coloured kids, and naturally took the shine out of me, and would you have believed it?--she would hardly vouchsafe to let me take the tips of her fingers!--Oh! woman! woman, false and fair----"

"No sweeping condemnations, I beg."

"Oh! no. Heaven forbid! Of course there are angels among Eve's daughters. Some--angels with flaming swords. Others--simply angels, wearing their little wings neatly folded under innocent muslin dresses--"

"As--for instance--?"

"While I was still standing, turning to stone at the assertion that Fraeulein Flora had already disposed of all her dances, my indignant eye chanced to light upon a face I had overlooked before--perhaps because it could not ogle and grin as some can--and now I saw a pair of large soft eyes pitifully fixed on mine, which seemed to say: 'Why did you never look our way before?--we could have warned you long ago, to beware of icebergs,' &c. &c.--all that eyes can say. So I resolved to be a fool no longer, and I walked across the room, look you, with a dignity--"

"I see!"--she interrupted drily; "I see him, as he walks over half a dozen dresses, turning over as many chairs as he could find in his way."

"Not this time, you unnatural mother, who are always ready to believe the worst of your own son! I tell you, I walked up to Lottchen Klas with the dignity of a prince--"

"Lottchen Klas, is it? A mother's blessing on your choice, my son!" she said with great solemnity. "If this be your first love, it is not of a disquieting nature. This is not likely to prove too absorbing--this will scarcely keep you from better things. I only beg you will put no nonsense into that poor child's head, do you hear?"

"I don't know what you take me for," he said with honest naivete. "I did not say a word to her that I might not as well have said to a woman of seventy."

"She will have been much edified by your conversation."

"Hm;--" he said; "_she_ began--she seemed to see that I could not be contented to go on poking here, and never be more than a very middling house-painter or decorator--that I had rather do anything, or go anywhere, to get to a proper school, and have an architect's education. How she knew, I can't say, but she began--"

"And you could not leave off, as I know you."

"Of course not, and she didn't want to; _she_ did not find it tiresome; and then, between whiles, we danced; and I never thought I had been so clever at it. You can't think how well she managed to keep me in order; so that we hardly ever got out of time, and got through the quadrille part of the business with only one very small confusion. Ah! she is a sweet creature! and divinely good!--and I really don't believe I ever could find a more suitable opportunity to fall in love. Look here,"--and he pulled out a handful of bows and cotillion badges from his waistcoat: "All these are to be put in the fire. Only this one crimson bow was hers: and this is to be carefully kept, and laid under my pillow to-night, and I am much mistaken if I do not find myself over head and ears in love when I awake in the morning!"

"So that is still to come?" she said, passing her hand playfully over his hair, "Alas! poor youth, I fear you may have long to wait! To-morrow is Sunday, and when you get to your drawingboard, you are most likely to find a slender shaft, or a well-proportioned capital, more attractive than all the Lottchens ever born; and indeed my son, it is not a pity! You have plenty of time before you yet."

She sat silent for a while, and thoughtfully staring at the little blue flame of the tea-kettle, that had been singing a merry treble to her voice. He too was silent, sighed, and shoved away his empty plate.

"Little mother," he said at last; "I daresay you are right. At least, I suppose you should know more about these things than I do. Tell me honestly now, in strictest confidence, as a mother should speak to a grown-up son: how long is it since you loved your first love?--And why did nothing come of it, as in general, they say, nothing ever did, does, or can come of anybody's first love?"

A shade passed over her face. "Good boys don't ask questions;" she said, shortly. "You be one; and fetch down our history from the bookshelf, and let us read a chapter of it before we go to bed."

"Not to-night, little mother, please not!" he implored. "Indeed it would be no use; it would be more waste time than ever, to drum any more of those weary old stories into my hard head to-night. Tell me one rather, as you used to do when I was a boy. I used to sit there, on that very footstool at your feet. You could tell beautiful stories. About the emperor Octavian, and the sons of Haymon, come now;" and before she could prevent him, he had crouched down at her feet "Here I am, and so now begin, little mother; I am sure a true love-story would do me far more good than all those bloody battles, and cruel murders you seem to think so necessary to my education."

He threw back his head with its shock of curls, and looked up with a face it was not so easy to resist.

"You are a naughty curious boy," she said; and you turn upon me now, to punish me for having spoiled you. You think I can deny you nothing; but that is your mistake. Get up, sir, will you?--and go to bed, and sleep away the presumptuous thought, that your little mother, who after God, should be your first authority on earth, ever was, or ever could have been, any such green gosling as you may have seen to-night. Well, do you mean to go?"--He did not stir.

"What's the use of making a fuss?" he said playfully. "You know you always end by doing what I want, naturally; because I never want anything but what is reasonable. And now I want to hear this love-story of yours--and I _ought_ to hear it, that I may not look like a fool when other people talk of it, and wonder why you never married--though--"

"Though?"

"Well, though you were so handsome,--they say."

"_Who_ says--?"

"Peter Lars for one; besides, I have only to open my eyes and see."

"You don't say so?"

"That is, to be candid, I never opened them till yesterday, when Peter Lars was talking of it, and said he would give a great deal to have seen you as you were when you first came, ten years ago. And then it only just occurred to me that I had been struck with you at the time. Since then, I never thought about it. I hardly knew whether you were plain or pretty. You were my own little mother, and that was all I cared for. But I see that Peter Lars, though I can't abide him, spoke truth when he said--"

"When he said, I had once been handsome?--thank you!"

Walter reddened. "Nay, you must not take it that way; for I think, on the contrary, yours is a face that could not alter much in half a lifetime."

"Possibly," she answered quietly: "By rights, a face that has never been young, should never grow old, unless the hair turns grey." A silence followed, while the little flame under the tea-kettle suddenly went out, and hushed that too. At last the girl resumed. "Yet I wrong myself; I was as young once as the youngest--happiest--most careless. If I changed so soon it was not my fault."

"Whose then?" he said, very softly, holding his breath to listen; and as his head rested on her knee, he felt how she shivered through all her limbs at the recollection.

"Whose fault was it?" he whispered, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling--on a spot where a tiny ring of light was flickering above the cylinder of the little lamp.

"It is not a long story," she said reluctantly; "but a story that is neither new nor pretty: and so why should I tell it you? If you had been a daughter, instead of being a son, I should not have let you grow up to be nineteen, without having told it. It might not have done much good, what stories ever did? But at least, I should have done my duty by her, as a mother. But you that are a man, what good could I have done, by telling you that man is a rapacious and a selfish animal. If your own conscience has not taught you that, sooner or later it will."

"Rapacious? You know me better, little mother!"

"Right dear boy;" she said, much moved. "And if I had not expected you to be different from other men, should I have taken the trouble, all these eleven years to help you out of your childhood? No, dear, in that sense you will never be a man: could you have even believed it possible that a man could break his plighted troth to a helpless maiden, simply because she told him that she had nothing to bring him, but her face and her fair fame, and her sweet seventeen?"

Walter started from his seat, and took a few hasty turns about the room; then dropping down again on the stool at her feet. "Tell me all;" he said.

"What is there to tell?" she answered sadly. "What signifies name and date and place? I have taught myself to forget it, but it has made me old before my time--I could not forget that if I would, for my glass tells me that every morning."

"Your glass tells fibs then," said Walter, interrupting her. "I have watched you narrowly; when you are by yourself, or with a person you dislike, you can look so grave and stem as to frighten people. But with me, when you are cheerful, and especially when you laugh, I often think there is not a girl I know, so young or so handsome as my own mamma."

She tapped him lightly on the mouth. "This is not the dancing-lesson, where compliments are practised with the steps. But I know you mean it kindly, dear; you want to comfort me for the mortifications of the past. But you need not, my son; I have comforted myself for this lost luck, and can even thank God that I did lose it. And was it not strange? A month or two after the thing had been broken off, and he had turned to a richer woman, Fortune was so mischievous as to send us a legacy which nobody had ever thought of; my elder sister and myself were now good matches, and my poor Rose who always had been plain, and long given up all hopes of a husband, was found to be a very charming creature, seen by the glitter of this unexpected gilding. Even an artist was among her suitors, and he considered himself a very fortunate man when she gave him the preference. I too did not want for choice, but it gave me no trouble, either of head or heart. Only when that man I had really loved came back to me, and had the impudence to talk of an error of the heart, then, indeed, the bitterness rose to my lips, and the disgust has remained. Especially when I hear people talking of man's virtues. They have taken good care, since then, to prevent my opinion changing; my poor sister--"

She stopped, and her eyebrows met with a sinister expression.

"Had she so hard a life of it?" asked Walter, timidly: "after I saw her she never left her bed, and then our Meister seemed kind enough; she always looked so sad, I used to pity her, though she never gave me a good word. After you came, you know, I was even forbidden to go near her: I often tried to think what made her so unkind. Of course I must have been a burthen to her at first, when the Meister brought me home, as a poor orphan boy, and she may have found it hard to have to appear fond of me, because she had no children of her own. But I did all I could to make myself of use, and certainly I did the work of any two of our usual apprentices. Why did she always turn away her head when she saw me, as nervous people do, when they see a poor blind worm, or a mouse?--do you know why, little mother?"

"Forget it, dear," she said. "Poor Rose was an unhappy woman; she took no pleasure in anything. _She_ really never was young at any time; not even as a little girl--I never saw her really merry, while I used to be full of mirth and mischief. In our own home, where we lived before our dear mother died, it was quite different to this ridiculous little puffed-up place, which is neither town nor country, and where people are always standing upon their dignity, even though they were to perish with it in their own dullness. When I hear of your stupid dancing-lessons, and of the amusements you have here, that can as little enliven the dreary winter, as the couple of wretched little oil-lamps can the dull streets--then I really do feel as if I were--not nine-and-twenty--but nine-and-ninety; and as if I had lived so long--so long as to remember the days, when the children of men were innocent and dwelt in Paradise."

"Did you ever care for dancing?"

"I danced all day, like the mermaids. Wherever I went and stood, I had the three-quarter time in my toes, and the prettiest of the quadrille tunes; and so I danced at my spinning-wheel, and while I was watching the kitchen-fire, or plaiting up my poor mother's hair, who could not easily lift her arms. Nay, even in church, I have caught myself singing the Psalms, and beating valse time with my foot--and terribly ashamed I was, afterwards, when I thought what a sin it was. It was a disease I had; but I was soon cured. Ever after I found out that I had given away my heart to a heartless man, my feet seemed shod with lead. I never entered a ballroom again; and though in church my thoughts were often far away, they were not in a merrier place, but in a quieter--darker--farther above, or below the earth."

A silence followed, and they heard the watchman pass again, and the clock strike twelve.

"This is the hour for the ghosts to dance," said Walter with a laugh, and a sort of superstitions shudder. "What do you say to taking a turn, little mother? I don't know why, but I do feel a most inordinate desire to see you dance. The Meister is still at the Star. On a Saturday, you know, he never comes home till one o'clock. We have the house to ourselves, and may do what we please, without anybody's being the wiser--unless indeed, that ricketty old cupboard should chance to fall upon us, and crush us, and send us dancing into all eternity. Hey! mamma, what do you say?"

He had jumped up, stroked back his hair, and stood before her, with a make-believe of buttoning his gloves, and settling his necktie.

"Foolish fellow!" she said. "What has come to him to-night? He sings, he falls in love, and now in the dead of night, he comes and calls upon his own old mother to stand up and dance with him! Is this what comes of spoiling sons, and letting them grow over their mother's heads?"

"Suffer me to say you are mistaken, honoured madam," he began, with mock devotion. "It is, on the contrary, your duty, as guardian of my unguarded youth--your serious duty--to convince yourself that I really do grow in grace, and make progress in those ornamental branches of education, which are indeed most foreign to my nature. At the close of my course of dancing-lessons, it might be considered proper to hold some species of examination."

She raised her eyes to his, with a look so grave, as to tone down his mischievous mood at once.

"It is time to have done with nonsense," she said; and her voice sounded almost sharp. "I would say goodnight, and leave you to yourself this moment, only I see that you are not nearly ready for sleep, nor will be, for ever so long--go, fetch the book. Even if you should not learn much to-night--which indeed does not seem likely--it may help us to get this nonsense out of your head, and that is always something gained."

He sighed as he walked towards the narrow bookshelf upon the cupboard. "Well, I suppose I must obey--for a change," he said, with a shake of his head. "Only if I should never know anything more of Barbarossa, than that his beard was red, it will be nobody's fault but yours."

"Well, and I suppose--for a change--I must temper my justice with mercy," she said, returning to a jesting tone. "Leave that history, and come and sit down here at my feet, and let me talk to you of gods and heroes; and if you are a good boy, and pay attention, I will shew you the pictures afterwards, as a reward."

She took up the little blue volume she had been looking through before. "I only found this yesterday," she said, "in the lumber-room upstairs; the title is 'Goetterlehre,' and it was edited in the last century by a man called Moritz. There are some good verses of Goethe's in it; I know you will like them."

He resumed his place at her feet, and she began. She had a clear voice, and used it simply; only when her feelings became excited it would sink to a moving melodious contralto. After she had read the first few pages, and waxing warmer, began to recite the passage: "To which of these immortals, the highest prize?" &c., &c.--the words almost turned to song. She read the poem slowly to the end, and gently closing the book--"How do you like it?" she whispered.

He did not answer. The eyes that had been dreamily fixed on the blue ring of flickering light upon the ceiling, had been dropping gradually, till at last they closed. His head was resting on her knee; he breathed softly, and smiled in his sleep. "Is he thinking of his last valse?" she said to herself, looking thoughtfully down on his cloudless brow, and at the full red lips, above which a line of soft yellow down had begun to shew itself. The lines of that blooming face were certainly far from regular; but even in sleep, there was an intellectual charm about it--a spiritualized sense of humour--that ennobled its expression. Those lips had certainly never parted to laugh at or to utter a scurrile jest.

Thus she sat gazing on the placid face of the sleeper; till wearied by the thoughts that came sweeping through her brain in the stillness of the night, she leaned back in her chair, her eyelids drooped, and she too, fell into a slight dreamy kind of sleep.

An hour elapsed. The wind blew the casement open, with a gust of damp night-air that extinguished the little lamp that had almost consumed its oil.

A heavy dragging step was heard upon the stairs. She heard it even through her dream, though the darkness prevented her waking quite. The door opened, and a lantern threw its full ray of vivid light full upon her face. She started up in alarm: "Is that you, Meister?" she said, hastily passing her hand across her eyes.

A strange figure was standing on the threshold--a tall man between fifty and sixty, in a long loose coat trimmed with fur, buttoned over a faded red velvet waistcoat. He wore a cap or barret, placed so far forward upon his grizzling curls, as also to cover the half of his flushed forehead. One foot was shod with a coarse stout boot, and the other, wrapt out of all shape, with a large felt slipper.

For all his uneven gait, and his uncouth appearance, there was that about him which was well calculated to quell any inclination to laugh; and the look from those sinister dark eyes, directed towards the group formed by the two young people, was enough to make even this fearless girl quail.

"What does all this mean?" he said, as he came forward and placed his lantern upon the table. "What are you two doing here at this hour? Is the boy asleep, or have you been acting a play?"

"I do not profess to understand you;" she answered, flushing up with pride and scorn. "He is asleep, as you see. We were reading, and he fell asleep; and then I did too."

"And the lamp? Why was the window suddenly darkened when I came up to the house-door? Did you mean to make me believe that you were in bed, and had been asleep for hours?"

She bent over the lad, and took him by the shoulder: "Get up, Walter," she said; "the Meister is here, and I wish to go to my own room, and not to hear any more of what he may please to say in his drunken--"

"Who dares to say it is the wine I have drunk that makes me speak?" he broke out in a tone so fierce, that the sleeper started, and springing to his feet, stood upright before him with a penitent mien.

"Go to bed, Walter," he continued, with more moderation. "It is nearly two o'clock. This is not to be borne! At this hour of the night--" His eye caught the girl's, who had now recovered her usual self-possession. "Ah, well!" he growled, "it will be put a stop to soon, in one way or another." Then--"I have somewhat to say to you, sister-in-law. I shall not be able to get up to-morrow morning; I feel my pains in all my joints, and my leg as heavy as a stone. So I shall expect to see you in my room, Helen; Good-night." He lighted a candle, took up his lantern, and limped downstairs again to his own room.

The two he left behind him did not speak another word. The lad gave Helen's hand a squeeze, and nodding to her with a look half penitent, half drowsy, he went up to the garret-room he shared with the first apprentice, Peter Lars, who had been asleep for hours. He threw off his clothes, listening to the cats that were running riot upon the roof; and only then remembered that he had left Lottchen's crimson bow to perish with the others, instead of taking it up with him to sleep upon. He laughed to himself before he fell asleep. "She is right," he thought; "I don't suppose it _is_ the real thing."

* * *

Next day was Sunday, and Helen went downstairs betimes, to knock at the Meister's door. He was lying upon the bed half dressed, in a faded green dressing-gown, with a blanket thrown over his ailing leg; while on the knee of the sound one, rested a heavy old book of plates, with views of churches and Roman ruins. The room was on the ground-floor, at the back of the house, and was filled with a greater disorder of artistical fancy than even the parlour upstairs.

When Helen came in, he rested his head of weird grizzling locks upon his fist, and partially raised himself. He only gave a slight nod by way of salutation; he seemed to be bent on letting her speak first.