A Sister's Love.

by W. Heimburg.

CHAPTER I.

A severe storm had been raging all day, and now, in the approaching twilight, seemed as if it would overleap all bounds in its wild confusion. Straight from the North Sea, over the broad Luneburg heath, it came rushing along, and beat against the gray walls of the manor-house, shook the great elms in the garden, tossed about the bushes, and blew from the bare branches the last yellow leaf yet spared them by the November frost.

The great castle-like building, inhabited for centuries by the Von Hegewitz family, looked dismal and gloomy under the cloud-laden sky; in almost spectral gloom it lay there, with its sharply pointed gables, its round tower, and heavy b.u.t.tresses supporting the walls.

If did not always look thus, this old manor-house; in summer it was very picturesque behind its green trees, the golden sunshine lying on its slate roof, the pointed gables sharply outlined against the blue sky, and the gray walls, framed by huge, old oaks, reflected in the brown water of the pond. Beside it lay the farm-buildings and the houses of the village, whose shingled roofs emerged in their turn from the foliage of the fruit-trees. Far out into the Mark country extended the view, over fields of waving corn, over green meadows and purple heath, bounded on the horizon by the dark line of a pine forest. A narrow strip of pine woods, besides, lay to the north, extending nearly to the garden, and on hot summer afternoons an almost intoxicating fragrance was wafted from it toward the quiet house.

Within it was still a real, old-fashioned German house; for there were dim corridors and deep niches, great vaulted rooms and large alcoves, little staircases with steep steps worn by many feet, and curious low vaulted doors. A flight of steps would lead quite unexpectedly from one room into the next, and here and there a door, instead of leading out of a room, opened, to one's surprise, into a huge closet. Then there were cemented floors, and great beams dividing the ceilings, and the smallest of window-panes. And yet where could more real comfort be found than in such an old house, especially when a November storm is howling without, and here indoors great fir logs are crackling in the gay-tiled stove?

And just now, down the stairs from the upper story, came an old lady, looking as if comfort itself came with the green silk knitting-bag on her arm, her large lace cap, and the brown silk shawl over her shoulders. She might have been in the fifties, this small, spare figure, and she limped. Fraulein Rosamond von Hegewitz had limped all her life, and yet a more contented nature than hers did not exist. She now turned to the left and walked along the narrow corridor. This was her regular evening walk, as she went to her nephew and niece in the sitting-room--a dear old walk, which she had taken for years, since the time when the children were little, and her brother and sister-in-law were still alive; when twilight came she could no longer endure the solitude of her spinster's room.

Just as she was about to lay her hand on the bright bra.s.s door-handle, she perceived by the dim light of the hall-lamp a girl who was sobbing gently, her coa.r.s.e linen ap.r.o.n thrown over her face.

"What are you crying about, Marieken?" asked the old lady kindly, coming back a step or two. The curly brown head was raised, and a young face, bathed in tears and now red from embarra.s.sment, looked up at Fraulein Rosamond.

"Ah, gracious Fraulein, I am to leave," she stammered, "and I----"

"Why, what have you--?" The old lady got no further, for just then the door was opened a little way and the clear, full tones of a youthful feminine voice came out into the corridor.

"That is my last word, Martensen; I will not suffer such things in my house. She may thank G.o.d that I have noticed her folly in good season.

Only think of Louisa Keller!"

"G.o.d in heaven, Fraulein!" the person accosted replied in defence, almost weeping. "The la.s.s has done nothing bad, and he is certainly a respectable man. O Fraulein, when one is young one knows too----"

"For shame, Martensen!" This came vehemently. "You know what I have said. Take your Marieken and go. I will have no frivolous maids in my house!"

The door was now opened wide, and an old woman came out, her wrinkled face red with excitement.

"Come, la.s.s," she called to the girl, who had just put her ap.r.o.n over her eyes again; "troubles don't last forever! She'll feel it herself some day yet! Driving away my girl as if she had been stealing!" And without greeting the old lady, she seized her daughter by the arm and drew her away with her.

Rosamond von Hegewitz turned slowly to the door. A half-mocking, half-earnest expression lay on the wise old face. "_Bon soir_, Anna Maria!" said she, as she entered the brightly lighted sitting-room.

A girl rose from the chair before the ma.s.sive secretary, went toward the new-comer, and received her with that formality which at the beginning of our century had not yet disappeared from the circle of gentle families, pressing to her lips the outstretched hand with an expression of deepest respect.

"Good evening, aunt; how are you feeling?"

It was the same rich voice that had spoken before, and, like it, could belong only to such a fresh young creature. Anna Maria von Hegewitz was just turned eighteen, and the whole charm of these eighteen years was woven about her slender figure and the rosy face under her braids of fair hair. In contradiction to this girlishness, a pair of deep gray eyes looked out from beneath the white forehead, seriously, and with almost a look of experience, which, with a peculiar self-conscious expression about the mouth, lent a certain austerity to the face.

"Thank you, my dear, I am well," replied the old lady, seating herself at the round table before the sofa, upon which were burning four candles in shining bra.s.s candlesticks. "Don't let me interrupt you, _ma mignonne_. I see I have broken in upon your writing; are you writing to Klaus?"

"I have only been looking over the grain accounts, aunt; I shall be done in a moment. I shall not write again to Klaus, for he must return day after to-morrow at the latest. If you will excuse me a moment----"

"Oh, certainly, child. I will occupy myself alone meanwhile." The old lady drew her knitting-work from the silk bag and began to work, at the same time glancing dreamily about the large, warm, comfortable room.

She had known it thus long since; nothing in it had been altered since her youth--the same deep arm-chairs around the table, the artistic inlaid cupboards, even the dark, stamped leather wall-paper was still the same, and the old rococo clock still ticked its low, swift to-and-fro, as if it could not make the time pa.s.s quickly enough. And there at the desk, where the young niece was sitting, her only brother had worked and calculated, and at that sewing-table on the estrade at the window had been the favorite seat of the sister-in-law who died so young. But how little resemblance there was between mother and daughter!

The old lady looked over toward her again. The girl's lips moved, and the slender hand pa.s.sed slowly with the pencil down the row of figures on the paper. "Makes five hundred and seventy-five thaler, twenty-three groschen," she said, half-aloud. "Correct!

"Now, then, Aunt Rosamond, I am at your service." She extinguished the candle, locked the writing-desk, and bringing a pretty spinning-wheel from the corner, sat down near her aunt, and soon the little wheel was gently humming, and the slender fingers drawing the finest of thread from the shining flax. For a while the room was quiet, the silence broken only by the howling of the storm and the crackling of the burning log in the stove.

"Anna Maria," began the old lady at last, "you know I never interfere with your arrangements, so pardon me if I ask why you send Marieken away."

"She has a love affair with Gottlieb," replied the niece, shortly.

"I am sorry for that, Anna Maria; she was always a girl who respected herself; ought you to act so severely?"

"She gives him her supper secretly, and runs about the garden with him on pitch-dark nights. I will not have such actions in my house, and know that Klaus would not approve of it either." The words sounded strangely from the young lips.

"Yes, Anna Maria "--Rosamond von Hegewitz smiled "if you will judge thus! These people have quite different sentiments from us, and--and you cannot know, I suppose, if their views are honest?"

"That is nothing to me!" replied Anna Maria. "They _cannot_ marry, because they are both as poor as church mice. What is to come of it? The girl must leave; you surely see that, dear aunt?"

The old lady now laughed aloud. "One can see, Anna Maria, that you know nothing yet of a real attachment, or you would not proceed in so dictatorial a manner."

The slightest change came over the young face. "I _will_ not know it, either!" she declared firmly, almost turning away.

"But, sweetheart," came from the old voice almost anxiously, "do you think that it will always be so with you? You are eighteen years old--do you think your heart will live on thus without ever feeling a pa.s.sion?

And do you expect the same of your brother, Anna Maria? Klaus is still so young----"

The little foot stopped on the treadle of the wheel, and the gray eyes looked in amazement at the speaker.

"Don't you know then, aunt, that it is a long-established matter that Klaus and I should always stay together? Klaus promised our mother on her death-bed that he would never leave me. And I go away from Klaus?

Oh, sooner--sooner may the sky fall! Don't speak of such possibilities, Aunt Rosamond. It is absurd even to think of."

"Pardon me, Anna Maria"--the words sounded almost solemn--"I was present when your dying mother took from Klaus his promise never to leave you, always to protect you. But at the same time to forbid him to love another woman, a woman whom his heart might choose, she surely did not intend!"

"Aunt Rosamond!" cried the girl, almost threateningly.

"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 pet.i.te_," 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 pa.s.sed 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 Sturmer, 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, n.o.bly-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 pa.s.sion united them--they collected antiquities.