Well, on the afternoon of the next day, who should come to the house in the Red Tower but our Helene's gossip, for this week at least her bosom friend, Katrin Texel. She was even more impressive in manner than ever, and also a little pleasanter to behold. For her angles were clothing themselves into curves, and she was learning, perhaps from the Little Playmate, to leave off bouncing into a room like a cow at the trot, and to walk in sedately instead. By-and-by I knew she would come sailing down the street like a towered galleon from the isles of Ind. For all that, she looked not ill--an academic study for Juno, one might say. But to make love to--why, as Helene was wont to remark, _Feech!_

And the curious thing about Katrin Texel was that though her corporeal part might be a direct inheritance from her Burgomeister father and his substantial brewery, her spirit had been designed for an artful fairy of half her size, in order that it might go pirouetting into airy realms of the imagination. For she was gay enough and lightsome enough in her demeanor. She came in with a skip which would have been entrancing in some elfish mignonne who could dance light-foot on spring flowers without crushing them. But when this our solid Burgomagisterial Katrin tripped in, it nearly drove me wild with mirth. For it was as if some bland maternal cow out of the pasture had skipped with a hop and a circle of flying skirts into a ballroom or a b.u.t.terfly of two hundred pounds'

weight had taken to flitting from flower to flower.

And this Katrin talked in a quick, light voice, with ups and downs and skips and quivers in it, as spring-heeled as a chamois goat on the mountains of the south.

"Ah, Tiny-chen," she would cry, as she came undulating and cooing in to our Helene, "is it you, dearest? 'Tis as sweet to see you as for birds to kiss on bough! I have danced all day in the sunshine just to think that I should come to see you! And tell me why you have not been to visit me.

Ah, bad one--cruelest--as cruel as she is pretty" (appealing to me), "is she not? And there, our Michael, great oaf, sits at home desolated that he does not hear her foot on the stairs. The foolish fellow tells me that he listens for four little pit-a-pats every time that I come up from the court-yard, and is disappointed when there come back only my poor two."

And Katrin becked and nodded and set her head to the side--like to the divine Io-Cow playing at being little Jenny Wren.

And as for me, I kept my gravity--or, rather, how could I lose it, hearing such nonsense about that great stupid beer-vat, Michael Texel.

Michael Texel, indeed! I should admire to hear of Michael Texel so much as raising his eyes to the Little Playmate. Why, I would stave him on the open street like a puncheon of eight, and think nothing of the doing of it.

Michael Texel, indeed!

But I am forgetting. My business at this time was to make love to Katrin, so that I might banish the ill impression which Helene had formed concerning that pleasant, harmless little Christian's Elsa over there. I never heard anything so foolish in my life. But, then, what women will think and say pa.s.ses the imagination of man.

Michael Texel indeed!

The thought of that young man of beef and beer recurred so persistently and forcibly to me that for a time I could scarce command myself to speak civilly to his sister. Though, of course, she was quite different, being a woman, and informed with such a quick and dainty spirit that at times it seemed as it had been imprisoned in her too ma.s.sive frame and held "in subjection to the flesh," as the clerics say. G.o.d wot, I never knew I had so much religion and morality about me till I came to write. If I do not have a care this tale of mine will turn out almost as painful as a book of devotion which they set children to read on saints' days to keep them from being over-happy.

But I subdued my feelings and drew up somewhat nearer to Katrin.

"My Little Sister--" so I began, cunningly, as I thought--"my sister Helene is, indeed, fortunate to have so fair a friend, and one so devoted--"

"As my brother Michael, yes," she twittered, with her most ponderous, cage-bird manner; "yes, indeed, he _is_ devoted to her."

"No," said I, hastily (confound the great hulking camel!), "I mean such a faithful friend as yourself. I, alas, have no friend. I am cut off from all society of my kind. Often and often have I felt the weight of loneliness press heavy upon me in this darksome tower."

I saw Helene rise, go to the window, and glance across with such a peculiar smile that I knew as well as if I had seen her that Christian's Elsa was at her window with her music, looking across for me between each bar. I cannot describe the smile which hovered on the face of the Little Playmate. But perhaps all the male beings who read my book may have seen something like it. All that I can say is, that the smile conveyed an almost superhuman understanding of men and their little ways, and, curiously enough, something of contempt too.

But I was not going to be discouraged by any smile, acid or sweet.

Besides, I had something still to pay back.

Michael Texel, indeed!--faith, by St. Blaise, I will Texel him tightly an he comes sneaking to our gate!

So again I drew yet nearer to his sister. Katrin dimpled and showed her teeth, with a smile like the sun going about the world, till I had almost put my hand behind her shoulders to catch the ends of it when it got round. This illumination almost finished me, for it was not the kind of smile I had been accustomed to from--well, that was not the business I was on at present.

CHAPTER XV

THE LITTLE PLAYMATE SETTLES ACCOUNTS

But I admit that the smile discouraged me. Nevertheless I proceeded gallantly.

"Ah, Jungfrau Texel," said I, "you cannot know how your presence brightens our lives here in the Red Tower. Wherefore will you not come oftener to our grim abode?"

I thought that, on the whole, pretty well; but, looking up at Helene, I saw that her smile (so different from that of the Io-Cow Katrin) had become a whole volume of scathing satire. G.o.d wot, it is not easy to make love to a la.s.s when your "Little Sister" is listening--especially to a woman-mountain set on watch-springs like Katrin Texel.

But, after all, Katrin was no ways averse to love-making of any kind, which, after all, is the main thing. And as for the Little Playmate, I did not mind her a bonnet-tag. She had brought it upon herself.

Michael Texel indeed!

So I went on. It was excellent sport--such a jest as may not be played every day. I would show Mistress Helene (so I said to myself) whether she would like it any better if I made love to Katrin than if I went over on an occasional wet day to clean pistolets and oil French musketoons in Christian's guard-house.

So I began to tell Katrin how that woman was the sacredest influence on the life of men, with other things as I could recollect them out of a book of chivalry which I had been reading, the fine sentiments of which it was a pity to waste. For our Helene would have stamped her foot and boxed my ears for coming nigh her with such nonsense (that is, at this time she would, doubtless--not, however, always). And as for the la.s.s over the way--Christian's Elsa--she knew no more of letters than her father knew of the mathematics. Plain kissing was more in her way--as I have been told.

So I aired my book of chivalry to Katrin Texel.

"Fair maid," said I, "have you heard the refrain of the song that I love so well? It is like sweet music to me to hear it. I love sweet music.

This is the latest catch:

"'My true love hath my heart and I have his.'

"How goes it, Helene?" I asked, turning to her as she stood smiling bitterly by the window. For I knew that it would annoy her to be referred to. "Goes it not something like this?"

And I hummed fairly enough:

"'My true love hath my heart and I have his.'"

"And if it goes like that," said she, quickly, "it goeth like a tomcat mollrowing on the tiles in the middle of the night."

Now this being manifestly only spiteful, I took no notice of her work.

"Helene does not love good music," said I; "'tis her only fault. But I trust that you, dear Katrin, have a greater taste for angelic song?"

"And I trust you love to scratch upon the tw.a.n.gling zither as cats sharpen their claws upon the bark of trees? You love such music, _dear_ Katrin, do you not?" cried Helene over her shoulder from the window.

But Katrin, the divine cow, knew not what to make of us. I think she was of the opinion that Helene and I, with much study upon books, had suddenly gone mad.

"I do indeed love music," she said at last, uncertainly, "but, Master Hugo, not the kind of which my gossip, Helene, speaks. I love best of all a ballad of love, sung sweetly and with a melting expression, as from a lover by the wall to his mistress aloft in the balcony, like that of him of Italy, who sings:

"'O words that fall like summer dew on me.'

"How goes it?

"'O breath more sweet than is the growing--the growing--'"

She paused, and waved her hand as if to summon the words from the empty air.

"'_The growing garlic,'_ if it be a lover of Italy," cried Helene, still more spitefully. "This is enough and to spare of chivalry, besides which Hugo hath his lessons to learn for Friar Laurence, or else he will repent it on the morrow. Come, sweetheart, let us be going. I will e'en convoy thee home."

So she spoke, making great ostentation of her own superiority and emanc.i.p.ation from learning, treating me as a lad that must learn his horn-book at school.