CHAPTER VI.

SOUL-MURDER.

A fresh autumnal breeze was shaking the heavy boughs of the fruit-trees in the Hartwich kitchen-garden. Beneath a spreading apple-tree a new bench, painted green, had recently been placed. Some white garments, hanging upon a line to dry, fluttered like triumphal pennons in the direction from which a number of persons was slowly approaching the apple-tree. Rieka was carefully pushing along the rolling-chair, which, after so long affording shelter to the cats and chickens, had lately been recushioned and repaired. By its side walked good old Heim and Leuthold. Ernestine's frail little figure, with head still bandaged and hands gently folded, reclined in the chair; and if her large, dark eyes had not been riveted with an expression of utter enjoyment upon the distant landscape, she might have been thought smiling in death, so ashy pale was her emaciated countenance, so bloodless were the lips which were slightly open to inhale the pure morning air. The signs of returning and departing life are as wonderfully alike as morning and evening twilight. The child lying there, silent and motionless, might to all appearance be bidding farewell to the world, instead of greeting it anew after her dangerous illness. For to-day Ernestine was, as it were, celebrating her resurrection to life. It was the first time that she had been permitted to breathe the pure, open air of heaven; and her delight was so profound that she could only fold her little hands and pray silently. She had not the strength even to turn herself upon her cushions; but her youthful soul was preening its wings and soaring with the birds into the blue autumn skies.

"How are you now, my child?" Leuthold asked in a tone of tender sympathy.

"Oh, so well, dear uncle!" the little girl whispered with a long-drawn sigh. "I think I could run about, if I might."

"Ah, you could not yet, even if you might," said Heim, looking not without anxiety into the child's face, transfigured by an almost unearthly expression. And he laid his finger upon her pulse, now scarcely perceptible.

"Her spirit, as she recovers, is in advance of her body," he said, lingering behind with Leuthold. "Physically such a child is soon conquered and destroyed, but the heart is a wonderful thing in its power of endurance. I never see an expression of real suffering upon a child's face without the deepest sympathy. For when should we be really gay and happy in this life, if not while we are children?"

"You are right," said Leuthold. "That melancholy mouth, shaping itself now to an unaccustomed smile, those bright eyes, around which the traces of tears are scarcely yet obliterated, touch me deeply."

Heim glanced keenly at the speaker expressing himself apparently with emotion.

"Oh, what a pretty new bench!" said Ernestine in a weak voice, as they reached the apple-tree. "And the boughs droop around it like an arbour."

Her gaze roved hither and thither; the fluttering linen on the line pleased her; the white b.u.t.terflies, with spotted wings, hovering about the beds, enchanted her; she thought the far stretch of country, with its distant border of forest, magnificent,--everything was so new that she seemed to see it for the first time, and admired it all with intense delight. The long rows of irregular bean-poles opened mysterious, attractive paths to her imagination. Even the tall asparagus and the heads of cabbage, upon which large beads of morning dew were still lying, seemed to her master-pieces of nature.

"Oh, how lovely the world is!" she said to the two gentlemen. "And no one to punish me! You are so kind, Herr Geheimrath, and you, Uncle Leuthold, and you too, Rieka, are so good to me! I thank you all so much!" And she took and kissed the hands of Leuthold and Heim as they stood beside her, while tears filled her eyes.

"You strange child, what Snakes you cry now?" asked Leuthold.

"I cannot tell; I am so happy!" sobbed Ernestine. "If I only had a father or a mother!"

"But if your father were alive he would beat you again," said Rieka, taking a strictly practical view of the matter. "You ought to be glad that he is no longer here; it is much happier for you."

Ernestine's head drooped. "Oh, I am not longing for my father who is dead; I want a father to love me."

"You have an uncle who loves you fondly, my child," said Leuthold.

"Uncle," the little girl began again after a short pause, "how did the first people get here? Every one has a father and mother; but the first men could not have had any. Where did they come from?"

Leuthold and Heim exchanged glances of surprise.

"Ah, now you are going to the very root of the matter, prying into the deepest mysteries of creation!" said her uncle with a smile.

"There is stuff for a scholar in the child," said Heim; "she must be educated."

"Most certainly!" cried Leuthold with unwonted vivacity; "something must be made of her. In two years she will read Darwin." And he became lost in reverie.

Heim plucked two pansies that were growing among the weeds, and handed them to Ernestine. "Don't trouble your little brain with such thoughts," he said with an attempt to laugh. "When you are grown up you can learn all you wish to know. How few flowers you have here! Not enough for a nosegay!"

"No matter for that, Herr Heim," said Ernestine gaily. "Although there are so few flowers here, it seems to me as lovely as Paradise."

"The child is imaginative," Heim observed to Leuthold. "She finds Paradise in a neglected kitchen-garden; there is poetry there." And he pointed to her head and heart.

Leuthold took the child's hand. "If you wish for flowers, my darling, you shall have them. You are now"--and a spasmodic smile hovered upon his lips--"so rich that you need deny yourself nothing."

"I am rich!" Ernestine repeated, as though she could not grasp the idea. "Does the chair in which I am sitting belong to me?"

"Most certainly."

"And this garden, and the fields?"

"Everything that you see."

"Oh, how delightful! But, uncle, have I money enough to buy me a telescope like yours?"

Leuthold looked surprised at this question "Is that the end and aim of your desires? Well, then, you shall have a far better one than mine.

You shall have an observatory, whence you can search the heavens far and wide, and, if you choose, I will be your teacher. Would you like that?"

"Oh, uncle!" sighed Ernestine, "G.o.d is so kind to me--how shall I thank him for all he is giving me?"

An ugly smile appeared on Leuthold's face; she looked up at him in surprise, and so fixedly that he involuntarily turned aside.

It was strange! Why had her uncle smiled at those words. Was what she had said so stupid, then? Was he laughing at her, or at--what? Suddenly there was an alloy in her happiness, as if she had found an ugly worm in a fragrant rose or discovered a flaw in a clear mirror. A pang shot through her heart. Yes, little Kay in the story-book must have felt just so when a splinter of the evil mirror got into his eye and heart and nothing seemed perfect or stainless to him any more. Instinctively she looked up into the sky, as if to see the demon flying there with the mysterious mirror that cast scorn and contempt upon the works of the good G.o.d; and when she glanced again at her uncle, who had just smiled so disagreeably, he seemed to her to look as she had fancied an evil spirit must look, and she shrank from him in a way that she could not herself comprehend. She leaned back in her chair exhausted, to rest after all these wearisome thoughts that had chased one another through her brain, and Heim, observing this, took Leuthold aside; she heard him say, "Come, we will leave the child to take a little sleep."

Rieka sat down quietly upon the bench beside her. Ernestine nestled comfortably among the yielding cushions, and the fragrant breeze stroked her cheek like a gentle, caressing hand. The birds were softly twittering in the boughs overhead. All nature breathed in her ear: "Sleep, sleep on the tender breast of the youthful day. Rest! you are not yet rested, after all that you have suffered!" And she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she could not. Why had her uncle smiled when she spoke of G.o.d? This question kept her awake, and scared away rest from her trusting, childish soul.

Meanwhile Helm and Leuthold walked on through the garden. "Herr Professor," the former began to his companion, who was lost in thought, "I must speak with you about the future of our protege. I have plans for her, depending upon you for their fulfilment." Leuthold looked at him attentively. "I had a desire," Heim continued, "the first time I saw this strange child, to adopt her for my own; and this desire has become stronger since chance has brought me into such intimate a.s.sociation with her. My request of you now is: Abdicate--not your rights, but--your duties as her guardian in my favour, and let me take her to the capital with me, and have her educated and trained so that full justice may be done to her physical and mental capacities."

Leuthold was silent for a few moments, and then said with some hesitation, as he drew a long strip of gra.s.s through his slender white fingers, "That looks, Herr Geheimrath, as if you did not give me credit for the ability or the will to educate my ward suitably."

Heim shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "There shall be no wire-drawing between us, Herr Gleissert; we both know what we think of each other, and a physician has no time to waste in complimental speeches. Be kind enough to signify to me, as briefly and decidedly as possible, your acceptance or refusal of my proposal."

"Well, then," Leuthold replied with a keen glance, "I must reply to you with a brief and decided 'No!'"

"Indeed!" was all that Heim in his chagrin rejoined.

"Look you, Herr Geheimrath," Leuthold began after some moments of reflection; "I will be frank with you. You know the dark stain that sullies my past, and the fault of my nature,--ambition. But, for all that, Herr Geheimrath, I am not heartless! In my childhood I was repelled on all sides, just as Ernestine has been. I was always cast in the shade by Hartwich, the son of my wealthy step-mother. You, as a student of human nature, well know what power there is in early surroundings to mould a man's future,--perhaps this may make you more lenient to my faults. Neither affection nor interest was shown me, and so kindly feelings faded away within me,--I could not give what I never received. Thus, Herr Geheimrath, I grew up an embittered, hardened man.

The severity and sternness with which I was treated caused me to cultivate a sort of plausibility that won me friends, although I had no qualities to enable me to retain them. Therefore I was accounted a flatterer and a hypocrite. But the worst of all was, I was never taught the nice distinction between honours and honour, and thus it was that, in my blind grasp after honours, I sacrificed my honour!" He covered his eyes with his hand and paused for a moment. Old Heim shook his huge head, vexed with himself for the emotion of sympathy that he could not suppress.

"My step-mother," Leuthold continued, "was an imperious, masculine woman, who tyrannized over her husband and made him as unhappy as her son and step-son. You have seen the effect of her training upon Hartwich,--he became a drunkard, sinning in the flesh; I, of a less sensual nature, sinned in spirit!"

"Forgive me for interrupting you," Heim interposed here; "but I am constrained to observe that if you had sinned no further than in robbing poor Hilsborn of his discovery, you would indeed have coveted only spiritual things, and there might have been some excuse for you; but you longed for earthly possessions,--you even grasped after the property of the poor child who has been left to your care. Judge for yourself whether such a helpless little creature can be confided without anxiety to the charge of a guardian who has not scrupled to endeavour to possess himself of her inheritance!"

Leuthold stood confronting Heim, without betraying, by a single change of feature, the emotions of his mind. "Herr Geheimrath," he said with dignity, "I understand perfectly how all that must appear to a stranger entirely unacquainted with the circ.u.mstances of the case, and I cannot wonder that you think your accusation of me well founded. So be it. I did endeavour to possess myself of Hartwich's property, for two-thirds of it were mine by right. Are you aware, Herr Geheimrath, that when I first took my place in the factory here, Hartwich was on the brink of bankruptcy? Are you aware that entirely through my exertions the business is now free from debt, and that the income which in the course of ten years made Hartwich a wealthy man was the result solely of my improvements? He contributed nothing but the raw material, which my efforts converted into a means of wealth. Had I not a sacred right to the fruits of my exertions?"

Again the Geheimrath shrugged his shoulders and did not speak.

"Time is money," Leuthold continued; "and I frankly admit that I do not belong to the cla.s.s of men who give without any hope of a return. I am a poor man, compelled to depend upon myself. I receive nothing gratuitously; why should I give anything? Hartwich owed me for the time I sacrificed to him. I do not claim too much when I aver that, with my capacity, I could have earned three thousand thalers yearly as the superintendent of any other extensive manufactory, while I received from Hartwich the small salary of a mere overseer. And three thousand thalers yearly amount in ten years to thirty thousand thalers, without counting the interest. There you have one-third of the property that I 'coveted.'"

Heim a.s.sented with an expression of surprise.