"Do what you cannot help," replied Mr. Hummel, more quietly. "Klaus, why do you stand there on your hind legs staring like a tortoise? Why do you not help Miss Hummel in her garden-work. Then carry the whole birthday-present back again to the youthful flower-grower. My compliments, and he must in the darkness have mistaken the gardens."

He turned his back upon the company, and went with heavy steps to his office. Laura knelt on the ground and worked at the ill-used roses with heightened color and gloomy determination. The Doctor helped silently.

He had seen his father behind the hedge, and knew how deeply the poor man would feel this latest outburst on the part of his adversary. Laura did not desist till she had put all the flowers as well as possible into the pots; then she plunged her hands into the stream, and her tears mixed with the water. She led the Doctor back to the room; there she wrung her hands, quite beside herself.

"Life is horrible; our happiness is destroyed in this miserable quarrel. Only one thing can save you and me. You are a man, and must find out what can deliver us from this misery."

She rushed out of the room; the mother beckoned eagerly to the Doctor to remain behind, when he was on the point of following.

"She is beside herself," cried Fritz. "What do her words mean? What does she desire of me?"

The mother seated herself on the sofa, embarra.s.sed and full of anxiety, cleared her throat, and twisted at her sleeves.

"I must confide something to you, Doctor," she began, hesitatingly, "which will be very painful to us both; but I know not what to do, and all the representations that I make to my unhappy child are in vain.

Not to conceal anything from you,--it is a strange freak,--and I should have thought such a thing impossible."

She stopped and concealed her face in her pocket-handkerchief. Fritz looked anxiously at the disturbed face of Mrs. Hummel. A secret of Laura's that he had for weeks foreboded was now to fall destructively on his hopes.

"I will confess all to you, dear Doctor," continued the mother, with many sighs. "Laura esteems you beyond measure, and the thought of becoming your wife--I must say it in confidence--is not strange or disagreeable to her. But she has a fearful idea in her head, and I am ashamed to express it."

"Speak out," said the Doctor, in despair.

"Laura wishes you to elope with her."

Fritz was dazed.

"It is scarcely for a mother to express this wish to you, but I do not know how to do otherwise."

"But where to?" cried the Doctor, quite aghast.

"That is the most painful part of all, as you yourself must acknowledge. What put the idea into her head, whether poetry, or reading about the great world in the newspapers, I know not. But to her frame of mind, which is always excited and tragic, I can oppose no resistance. I am afraid to impart it to my husband. I conjure you to do what you can to calm my child. Her feelings are wounded, and I can no longer resist the inward struggle for this young heart."

"I beg permission," replied the Doctor, "to speak immediately with Laura on the subject."

Without waiting for the mother's answer, he hastened up the stairs to Laura's room. He knocked, but receiving no answer, opened the door.

Laura was sitting by her writing-table, sobbing violently.

"Dear, sweet Laura," exclaimed the Doctor, "I have been speaking with your mother; let me know all."

Laura started.

"Every warm feeling is rejected with scorn, every hour that I see you is embittered by the hostility of my father. The heart of the poorest maiden palpitates when she hears the voice of the man she loves: but I must ask, is that the happiness of love? When I do not see you I am in anxiety about you, and when you come to us I feel tormented, and listen with terror to every word of my father. I see you joyless and cast down. Fritz, your love for me, makes you unhappy."

"Patience, Laura," said the Doctor; "let us persevere. My confidence in your father's heart is greater than yours. He will gradually reconcile himself to me."

"Yes, after he has broken both our hearts; even great love is crushed by constant opposition. I cannot, amidst the wrangling of our hostile families, become your wife; the narrow street and the old hatred are destructive to me. I have often sat here lamenting that I was not a man who could boldly battle for his own happiness. Listen to a secret, Fritz," she said, approaching him, again wringing her hands; "here I am becoming haughty, malicious, and wicked."

"I have observed nothing of that kind," replied Fritz, astonished.

"I conceal it from you," exclaimed Laura; "but I struggle daily with bad thoughts, and I am indifferent to the love of my parents. When my father pats my head, the devil cries within me he had better let it alone. When my mother admonishes me to have patience, her talk secretly irritates me, because she uses finer words than are necessary. I hate the dog, so that I often beat him without cause. The conversation at the Sunday dinner, the stories of the old actor, and the eternal little t.i.ttle-tattle of the street appear insupportable to me. I feel that I am an odious creature, and I have frequently in this place wept over and hated myself. These bad fits are ever recurring and become more overpowering. I shall never be better here: where we live under a curse, like two spoiled children. We sink, Fritz, in these surroundings! Even the loving care of parents ceases to make one happy--the anxiety that one should not wet one's feet, that one should wear woolen stockings, and have cakes and sugar plums on a Sunday--is one to go through all this every year of one's life?"

She hastily opened her journal, and held out to him a bundle of poems and letters.

"Here are your letters; through these I have learnt to love you, for here is what I revere in you. Thus would I always have you be. When, therefore, I think of what you have to go through between our houses and to bear from my father, and when I observe that you wear a double shawl under every rough blast, I become anxious and worried about you; and I see you before me as a pampered book-worm, and myself as a little stout woman with a large cap and an insignificant face, sitting before the coffee cups, talking over the daily pa.s.sers by, and this thought oppresses my heart."

Fritz recognized his letters. He had long felt certain that Laura was his secret confidant, but when he now looked at the loved one who held up to him the secret correspondence, he no longer thought of the caprice which had occasioned him so much grief; he thought only of the true-heartedness and of the poetry of this tender connexion.

"Dear, dear Laura," he exclaimed, embracing her; "it seems as if two souls with which my heart had intercourse had become one, but you now divide me and yourself into human beings of daily life, and into higher natures. What has destroyed your cheerful confidence?"

"Our difficulties, Fritz, and the sorrow of seeing you without pleasure, and hearing your voice without being elevated by it; you are with me, and yet further off from me than in those days when I did not see you at all, or only in the society of friends."

She released herself from his embrace.

"Do you love me? and are you the man who has written these? If so, venture to withdraw me from this captivity. Begin a new life with me. I will work with you and be self-denying; you shall see of what I am capable; I will think day and night of how I can earn our maintenance, that you may be undisturbed by petty cares in your learned work. Be brisk and bold, cast off your eternal caution, venture for once to do what others may look at askance."

"If I were to do it," answered Fritz, seriously, "the risk would be small for me. For you the consequences may be such as you do not think of. How can you imagine that a rash determination can be good for you if it throws fresh discord into your soul, and burdens your whole life with a feeling of guilt towards others?"

"If I take upon myself to do what is wrong," exclaimed Laura, gloomily, "I do it not for myself alone. I feel but too well that it is wrong, but I venture it for our love. Never will my father voluntarily lay my hand in yours. He knows that I am devoted to you, and is not so hard as to wish my unhappiness, but he cannot overcome his disinclination. One day he is compelled to acknowledge that you are the man to whom I ought to belong, the next the bitter feeling of how hateful it is to him again returns. If you venture to defy him you will do what is really agreeable to him; show a strong will, and, though he may be angry, he will easily be appeased by your courage. He loves me," she said in a low tone, "but he is fearfully hard to others."

"Is he always so?" asked the Doctor. "It is clear the daughter does not know the full worth of her father. I should at this moment be doing both him and you an injustice if I were to conceal from you what he wishes to keep secret. Listen, then: when my poor father was sitting by me in despair, your father entered our house and gave us in the most magnanimous way the means of averting the threatened blow. Do you not know that his sulkiness and quarrelsomeness are frequently only the expression of a rough humor?"

Laura watched his mouth as if she wished to devour every word that fell from his lips.

"Did my father do this?" she exclaimed, startled to the utmost, raising her arms towards heaven, and throwing herself down upon her writing-table.

Fritz wished to raise her.

"Leave me," she entreated, pa.s.sionately, "it will pa.s.s off. I am happy.

Leave me alone now, beloved one."

The Doctor closed the door gently, and went down to the mother, who still sat on the sofa overwhelmed with anxiety, revolving in her mind, with motherly alarm, all the exciting scenes of an elopement.

"I beg of you," he said, "not to worry Laura now by remonstrances. She will regain her calmness. Trust to her n.o.ble heart."

With these wise words the Doctor endeavored to comfort himself.

Meanwhile Laura lay supported against the chair, and thought over her injustice to her father. For years she had borne the sorrow which is bitterest to the heart of a child, and now the pressure was taken from her soul. At last she arose, drew out her diary, tore out one page after another, crumpled up the leaves and threw them into the fire--a small sacrifice. She watched it till the last sparks flickered in the dark ashes, then she closed the stove and hastened out of the room.

Mr. Hummel was sitting in his warehouse before a battalion of new hats with broad brims and round crowns, which were placed for review before his field-marshal's eye, and he spoke reprovingly to his bookkeeper:

"They are like mere barbers' basins; man is losing his dignity. At all events, we shall make profit by these coverings: no one notices the cats'-hairs of which they are made; but they rob the head of the German citizen of the last breath of fresh air that he has. .h.i.therto secretly carried about with him in his high hat. In my youth one recognized a citizen by three points: on his body he wore a coat of blue cloth, on his head a black hat, and in his pocket a great house-key, with the ring of which, in case of a.s.sault by night, he could twist the noses of a.s.sa.s.sins. Now he goes off in a gray jacket to drink his beer, opens the door of the house with a small corkscrew, and the last high hat will probably be bought up as a rarity for art collections. You may immediately put aside part of our manufacture for antiquarians."

This pleasant grumbling was interrupted by Laura, who entered eagerly, seized her father's hand with an imploring look, and drew him from his warehouse into his small office. Mr. Hummel submitted to be thus led, as patiently as Lot when the angel led him from the burning cities of the valley. When she was alone with her father she threw her arms about his neck, kissed and stroked his cheek, and for a long time could bring out nothing but "My good, n.o.ble father." Mr. Hummel was well pleased with this stormy fashion of endearment for a time.

"Now I have had enough of this caressing. What do you want? This introduction is too grand for a new parasol or a concert ticket."

"Father," cried Laura, "I know all that you have done for our neighbor.

I beg your forgiveness; I, unfortunate one, have misunderstood your heart, and have many times inwardly resented your harshness."

She kissed his hands, tears falling from her eyes.