Part 149 (2/2)
The servant announced the freeholder's wife.
”No--Walpurga!” cried a voice, and before the servant could bring the answer, Walpurga had entered the room.
”Ah, dear Doctor, you're our neighbor! I heard, only a minute ago, that you were living here, and it's scarcely four hours' walk from our farm.
Yes, that's the way people live hereabouts: alone and away from each other, just as if one were dead.”
She offered her hand to Gunther, but he was busily engaged in gathering up some papers, and inquired:
”Does your mother still live?”
”Alas! no. Oh, if she had only lived to see Doctor Gunther once more!
Who knows whether she wouldn't be living yet, if we could have called you when she was sick.”
Walpurga wept at the remembrance of her mother. Gunther seated himself and asked:
”What is it you want?”
”How? What?” asked Walpurga, quickly, drying her tears. ”And you never once ask how it fares with me?”
”You're prosperous and have changed but little.”
”May I sit down?” asked Walpurga, in an anxious voice. This cold reception from one who had always been so kind to her, affected her so deeply that she could scarcely stand. She looked about her as if bewildered, and at last said:
”And is there nothing more you want to ask me? Where I live and how my husband and children are?”
”Walpurga,” said Gunther, rising from his seat, ”lay aside your old acting.”
”What? acting? I don't know what you mean! What have I to do with acting?”
”That does not concern us now. Did you want to ask me anything? or have you anything to tell me?”
”To be sure; that's just why I came.”
”What is it?”
”Yes; but you seem so strange that my thoughts are quite mixed up.
Hansei doesn't know that I've come here, and not another soul in the world is to know about it but yourself. I can keep a secret; I have kept one. I can be trusted.”
”I know it,” said the physician, in a hard voice.
”You know it? How? You can't know it, and I shan't tell you all of it, either. I might have told you, but after such a reception, I can't.”
”Do as you please; speak or be silent; but cut it short, for I have very little time.”
<script>