Part 13 (1/2)
During this conversation Johann Leopold had approached Johanna at her coffee-table.
”How do you like your new cousin?” he asked; ”but I need hardly ask, for you seem to have become excellent friends with him since last evening.”
”Not quite since last evening,” Johanna replied, blus.h.i.+ng slightly. ”He came to see me just after my father's death, and was so kind----”
”I can easily imagine it,” Johann Leopold interrupted her. ”He knows how to strike the right chord everywhere, modern Piper of Hamelin that he is. Have a care of him.”
She looked up at him inquiringly, but the telltale blush would return; involuntarily she turned away to conceal it, and suddenly, she did not know why, she remembered the lovers whom she had promised to befriend.
”I have a favour to ask of you,” she said, gravely. ”It concerns Red Jakob.”
”What is it?” he asked, taking a chair by her side; and, encouraged by his sympathy, she told him of the scene in the forest lodge and of poor Christine's sorrows. Johann Leopold readily promised his help to the girl, and together they discussed what should be done.
”Let me beg you, Magelone, to look towards the coffee-table,” said Hildegard, after she had watched the pair for a while. ”They have been engaged in that interesting conversation for a quarter of an hour. Are you not jealous?”
Magelone laughed. ”Jealous of Johanna? Oh, no,” she declared, confidently.
”Don't be so sure, my dear child,” was Hildegard's sneering reply. ”In spite of your irresistible charms, you have never succeeded since I have been here in making Johann Leopold talk as he is now talking to Johanna.”
”Yes, he actually seems transformed,” said Hedwig. ”He certainly is talking and listening now, while beside you he sits like a wooden doll.”
”Of course, ''tis love, 'tis love that makes men mute,'” Magelone said, with a smile; but her eyes gleamed, and a sensation of mistrust of Johanna stirred in her heart,--faint and fleeting, it is true, but it was the beginning, nevertheless, of a change in the relations between the cousins.
The next morning Johann Leopold rode to the forest lodge. When he returned, meeting Johanna in the corridor, he told her that the rough fellow had wept bitterly when told of the death of his child, and had entreated that he might see Christine.
”It would be best for you to go up to the lodge with her to-morrow morning early,” he added; ”it would lighten the weary way for her, and I will be there to take her to the invalid.”
”I will certainly have her there,” Johanna replied, ”punctually at eleven o'clock. Oh, Johann Leopold, how kind you are!”
They had just reached the drawing-room door. Magelone, gliding noiselessly down-stairs, heard Johanna's last words.
”What has he been doing that is so kind?” she asked. ”Tell me, that I may admire it too.”
Johanna was embarra.s.sed. Her cousin came to her a.s.sistance. ”Never mind, my dear Magelone,” he said, in his usual cold, deliberate tone. ”You would consider it the mere dilettantism of philanthropy, upon which you but lately expended your ridicule.”
As he spoke he opened the drawing-room door. Magelone pa.s.sed him with an angry blush. How silly to take her words so seriously! Of course Johanna never said such things. The girl was growing positively disagreeable.
According to agreement, Johanna presented herself with her protegee at the forester's the next morning. Christine could not yet believe that she should see Red Jakob. ”His sister will certainly prevent it,” she kept saying.
But Johann Leopold's authority had successfully opposed the forester's wife. As soon as she saw Johanna and Christine approaching she sullenly withdrew, and contented herself with watching them through the c.h.i.n.k of the door.
She did not see much. Johann Leopold went to meet the visitors. ”Come, my child, Jakob is expecting you,” he said, with a gentle kindness that aggravated Frau Kruger's ill humour. He had never spoken so to either her husband or herself. ”Do not be afraid,” he went on; ”no one shall molest you. If any should try to do so, let me know.” And he opened the door of the sick-room.
”Christine, have you come at last?” Jakob's voice called from the bed.
With a cry the girl rushed to him, and Johann Leopold closed the door upon them. ”Come, Johanna, we have nothing further to do here,” he said, and together they left the house.
When the forester's wife looked from the window, they were walking down the forest-path. She smiled scornfully. ”No one could persuade me,” she thought, ”that those two came up here for the sake of Jakob and Christine; but I'll see to it, they may depend upon it. If I could only hear what they are talking about! She looks up at him as if he were the Herr Pastor in the pulpit.”
Their talk was strange enough,--it was rather a monologue of Johann Leopold's to which Johanna listened.
”Happy unfortunates!” he began, looking sadly abroad into s.p.a.ce. ”Even yesterday, when Jakob was weeping for his boy and crying out after Christine, I envied him. How such emotion must enlarge and strengthen the soul! Happiness or misery is of no moment, but an absorbing pa.s.sion, that possesses and rules the entire man----Yet who experiences such?