Part 13 (1/2)
”Is that true? Have you really seen it? She has wept?”
Frida looked with unmeasured surprise at his beaming face.
”And you are glad of it. Can you really blame her if she has a mistaken opinion of you when you have caused that mistake? Can you be so revengeful as to torment her for it?”
”Oh! the wisdom of sixteen years!” cried Gustave, bursting into irrepressible laughter. ”You will defend your friend against me, will you?--against me? You are indeed very wise for your years, my little Frida, but of such things you understand nothing, and, indeed, it is not necessary. You can still wait a couple of years. But now tell me all about it! When did Jessie weep? What did she cry for? How do you know that the tears concerned me? Tell me, tell me, or I shall die of impatience!”
His face indeed betrayed the highest excitement, and he seemed actually to devour the words from the girl's lips. Frida seemed certainly to know nothing of such things, for she looked astonished to the last degree, but yielded at last to his urgency.
”Jessie asked me seriously a short time ago if I would really entrust my whole future to such an egoist as you. I defended you, awkwardly enough, as I dared not betray you, and was obliged to submit to all the reproaches heaped on you.”
”And then?” asked Gustave breathlessly, ”and then?”
”Then, in the midst of the conversation, Jessie suddenly burst into tears, and cried--'You are blind, Frida; you persist in your blindness, and yet I have only your happiness in view! You don't know what dreadful pain it gives me to have to place this man in such a light before you, or what I would give if he stood as pure and high in my eyes as in yours!' And then she rushed away and locked herself in her room. But I know that she cried for hours.”
”That is incomparable, heavenly news!” cried Gustave, in fullest delight. ”Child, you do not know how cleverly you have observed. Come, I must give you a kiss for it!”
And with that he seized the girl in his arms and kissed her heartily on both cheeks.
CHAPTER VIII.
A shadow fell on the entrance of the arbour--there stood Sandow, who had returned to fetch his forgotten pocket-book, and thus became a witness of the scene.
For a moment he stood speechless and motionless, then he approached and cried, with the greatest indignation--
”Gustave!--Miss Palm!”
The girl started violently, even Gustave turned pale as he released her. The catastrophe which at any price he would yet delay, had burst, he saw that at a glance; now he must stand firm.
”What is all this?” asked Sandow, measuring his brother with blazing eyes. ”How dare you treat thus a young girl under the shelter of my house, and you, Miss Palm, how could you permit such conduct? It could not be agreeable to you? And yet there seems already a thorough understanding!”
Frida made no attempt to reply to the bitter reproaches heaped upon her. She looked at Gustave as if she expected him to defend her. He had already collected himself, and said impressively to his brother--
”Listen to me, you are in error, and I will explain all to you.”
”It needs no explanation,” interrupted Sandow. ”I have seen what you have been guilty of, and you will not try to deny the evidence of my own eyes. I always thought you frivolous, but not so dishonourable, but that you have, almost under the eyes of Jessie, your promised bride”--
”Frank, stop there!” cried Gustave, with such determination that Sandow, although trembling with rage, was silent. ”I cannot allow this, my self-sacrifice will not go so far as that. Frida, come to me. You see that we must speak. He must learn the truth.”
Frida obeyed. She came to his side, and he laid his arm protectingly round her. Sandow looked bewildered from one to the other. The affair was unintelligible to him, he had clearly no presentiment of the truth.
”You wrong me by your accusations,” said Gustave, ”and you wrong Frida too. If I kissed her I had a right to do so. She has been my charge from her earliest youth. The poor forsaken child was neglected by everyone who ought to have protected and sheltered her. I was the only one who recognised the right of kindred. I have used that right, and can support my actions by it.”
It was astonis.h.i.+ng how deeply earnest the voice of the irrepressible jester had become. At the first words a terrible presentiment seemed to seize Sandow. Every tinge of colour left his face, he became paler and paler, and with his eyes fixed on Frida, he repeated in a tuneless and mechanical voice--
”Your right of kindred? What--what do you mean?”
Gustave raised the head of the girl, which leant on his shoulder, and turned the face full towards his brother.