Part 11 (2/2)
”Where are the ladies?”
”Miss Clifford has just left me.”
”And Miss Palm?”
”I suppose she is on the beach. I have not seen her since my return.”
Sandow's eyes impatiently sought the farther part of the garden. He seemed disappointed that Frida had not come to meet him as usual.
”I have not seen you since this morning,” he remarked with temper. ”You certainly asked leave on account of pressing business, still I expected to see you in the office later. What kind of business can you have which occupies a whole day?”
”Well, first I was with Henderson, the banker.”
”Ah! About the new loan which is being raised in M----. I am glad that you have seen him yourself.”
”Naturally about the loan,” said Gustave, who did not scruple to leave his brother in error about his business proceedings, though in his wanderings through the picture gallery there had been no mention of the projected loan. ”And then there was some talk about private affairs.
When Mrs. Henderson was last here she saw our young country woman, and is quite charmed with her. It is remarkable what an effect this still, timid child produces on every one. From their first meeting, Miss Clifford, too, became one of her warmest friends.”
”The child is not so quiet and shy as you imagine,” said Sandow, whose eyes continued to look towards the sh.o.r.e. ”Beneath that reserve is a deeply emotional, a quite uncommon nature. I never suspected it till accident revealed it to me.”
”And since then, you, too, belong to the conquered. Really, Frank, I scarcely know you again. You treat this young girl, this almost total stranger, with a consideration, one might almost say a tenderness, of which your only and highly deserving brother has never been able to boast.”
Sandow had seated himself, and thoughtfully supported his head on his hand.
”There is something so fresh, so untouched, in such a young creature.
Against one's will it recalls one's own youthful days. She still clings so fast to her enthusiastic ideas, to her dreams of happiness to come, and cannot understand that the outer world should look on things under such a different aspect. Foolish, childish ideas, which will fall away of themselves in the rough school of the world, but while one listens to them all one's lost beliefs by degrees revive again.”
Again his voice had that peculiar softened tone, which those even who best knew the merchant had never heard from his lips, and which seemed like an echo from some older, happier time. Frida must indeed have understood how to touch the right chord as no one before had done, for the very qualities, which in Jessie were regarded as sentimentality and exaggeration, had here found their way to the stern, cold heart of the man. Gustave felt this contradiction, and said, with a touch of satire--
”But all that should not be new to you. You have lived all these years in Clifford's family, and Jessie has grown up under your eyes.”
”Jessie was always her parents' idolized darling,” replied Sandow, coldly. ”Love and happiness were literally showered upon her, and whoever did not treat her with flattery and tenderness, as myself for example, was feared and avoided by her. I have always been a stranger to this fair-haired, soft and petted child, and since she has been grown up, we have become still more distant. But this Frida with her wilful reserve, which we must overcome before reaching the real nature, has nothing weak and wavering about her. When once the somewhat forbidding crust has been broken through, strength and life are found beneath. I like such natures, perhaps because I feel something kindred in them, and sometimes I am surprised, almost startled, to hear from the lips of that girl, remarks and ideas almost identical with what were mine at the same age.”
Gustave made no reply, but he closely examined his brother's countenance. The latter felt this, and, as if ashamed of the warmer feeling he had allowed himself to display, immediately stopped, and resumed his usual cold business tone and manner.
”You might at least have come to the office for a few hours. There are things of importance going on, and another letter from Jenkins has arrived. He presses for the fulfilment of your promise with regard to the _K--che Zeitung_, and it is certainly high time. You must have written your article long since.”
”I had not supposed there was any hurry,” said Gustave. ”For some weeks you have not even mentioned the subject.”
”There were so many preparations to make. I have kept up an active correspondence with New York on the subject.”
”Which you have not allowed me to see as you did the former letters.”
”Then it was necessary for you to learn all particulars. This time it concerned very unpleasant difficulties which I alone must arrange.”
”I know; you have tried to release yourself from the whole thing!”
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