Part 98 (1/2)

”Mother, help her; say something to her,” whispered Walpurga.

”No; let her quietly recover herself. Every wound must bleed itself out.”

Irma grasped her hands, kissed them and cried:

”Mother! you've saved me. Mother! I'll remain with you; take me with you!”

”Yes, that I will. You'll find it ever so healthy up in my home. The air and the trees there are better than anywhere else in this world.

There you'll become well again, all this will fall away from you. Does your father know that you've run away, out into the wide world? and does he know why?”

”He did know. He's dead. Walpurga, tell her how it is with me.”

”There's time enough for that; for, G.o.d willing, we'll be together a long while. You can tell me all when you're calm and composed. But now, drink something.”

After considerable effort, the two women succeeded in drawing the silver-foiled cork. Walpurga finished the operation by taking the cork between her teeth and pulling it out. Irma drank some of the wine.

”Drink,” said Walpurga. ”It must be wholesome, for Doctor Gunther sent it to mother. But she won't drink it. She says she'll wait till she grows old and needs the strength that wine gives.”

A melancholy smile pa.s.sed over Irma's face at the thought that the aged woman before her meant to wait until she grew old.

Irma was obliged to take a few more mouthfuls of the wine. When she complained of the pain in her foot, the mother skillfully extracted a thorn. Irma felt as if a gentle angel were attending her, and offered to kiss the old woman's hands once more. ”My hands were never kissed before you kissed 'em,” said the old woman deprecatingly; ”but I know how you mean it. I never touched a countess before in all my life; but they're human beings, just like the rest of us.”

Irma heaved a deep sigh. She told her rescuers that she would go with them, but only on condition that no one except themselves was to know who she was. She wished to live concealed and unknown, and, if she were discovered, she would take her life.

”Don't do that again,” said the old woman, with a stern voice. ”Don't say that again. It won't do to trifle with such things. That's no threat. But here you have my hand and my word of honor that not a word shall pa.s.s my lips.”

”Nor mine either!” exclaimed Walpurga, laying her hand, with that of her mother, in Irma's.

”Tell me one thing,” asked the mother. ”Why didn't you go to a convent?

One can do that nowadays.”

”I mean to expiate in freedom,” said she.

”I understand you. You're right.”

Not another word was spoken. The mother held her hand upon Irma's forehead, on which she now bound a white handkerchief. ”It'll be well in a week, and there won't be a scar left,” she said, consolingly.

”The white cloth shall remain there as long as I live,” replied Irma.

She now asked them to provide her with other clothes, before she showed herself in Hansei's presence.

Walpurga hurried back to the inn near the landing-place. Here she found Hansei in an angry mood, and scolding terribly. Every interruption annoyed him. He had enough to look after, as it was. There was more work put upon him than upon the horses in the wagon. He was in that excited state, often produced by travel and change of abode, in which one's better self seems to disappear, and when a restless and homeless feeling renders its possessor excessively irritable. Besides that, the foal, beautiful as it was, had put him to considerable trouble. It had run away, and had almost got under the wheels of one of the wagons.

Hansei was very angry. Walpurga found it difficult to pacify him, and at last she burst into tears and said:

”Sooner than move to our new home in anger and hatred, I'd rather we'd all gone to the bottom in the boat.”

”Yes, yes; I'm quiet; just try to be so, too,” said Hansei, recovering himself and looking toward the lake as if Black Esther's head were again rising on the waves. He continued: