Part 13 (2/2)

”If you have not yet guessed, then read it in this face, perhaps it will now be clear to you. What likeness is it that you have remembered there. I have certainly deceived you, been forced to deceive you since you thrust every possibility of an understanding from you. Then I seized the only means, and brought Frida to you. I thought you would by degrees learn to comprehend the feeling which warmed your half-frozen heart, I thought it must at last dawn upon you, that the stranger who attracted you so powerfully had a right to your love. That is now impossible, the discovery has come too suddenly and unexpectedly, but look at those features, they are your own. For long years you have suffered under a dark and gloomy illusion, and have punished a guiltless child for the guilt of the mother. You awake at last and open your arms to her--to your own, your neglected child.”

A long oppressive silence followed these words. Sandow staggered, and for a moment it seemed as if he would give way altogether, but he stood upright. His face worked terribly, and his breast rose and fell quickly with the gasping breath, but he spoke no word.

”Come, Frida!” said Gustave gently, ”come to your father, you see he waits for you.”

He drew her forwards and would have led her to her father, but he had now regained his power of speech. He made a movement as if to thrust her from him, and hoa.r.s.e and roughly cried--

”Back! So easy a victory you need not expect. Now I see through the whole comedy.”

”Comedy!” repeated Gustave, deeply hurt. ”Frank, in such a moment can you speak thus.”

”And what else is it?” broke out Sandow. ”What else do you call that miserable jugglery which you have carried on behind by back? So, for weeks past I have been surrounded in my own house, with lies and deceit. And even Jessie has joined you; without her help it would have been impossible. All have conspired against me. You,” he turned to Frida as if he would pour all his rage and scorn upon her devoted head, but he encountered the girl's eyes, and the words died on his lips.

He was silent for some moments, and then continued with the bitterest contempt--

”No doubt they described to you in very enticing colours the benefit of having a father from whom you might inherit wealth, and who could give you a brilliant position in life. That is why you have stolen into my house with lies. But what I swore when I left Europe that I stand by. I have no child, will have none, were the law ten times to adjudge me one. Go back over the sea to whence you came. I will not be the victim of deceit.”

”That is what I feared,” said Gustave, half aloud. ”Frida,” he stepped quickly to her, ”now you must rouse the feelings of a father. You see he will not listen to me; to you he must, and will listen. Speak, then, at all events open your lips, do you not feel what hangs on this moment?”

But Frida spoke not, and did not open her lips, which were convulsively pressed together. She was deadly pale, and in her face was the same expression of hard, settled obstinacy which disfigured her father's countenance.

”Let me alone, Uncle Gustave,” she replied, ”I cannot entreat now, and if my life depended on it, I could not. I will only tell my father I am innocent of the 'deceit' with which he reproaches me.”

The delicate form was suddenly drawn up to its full height, the dark eyes blazed, and the deeply injured feelings burst forth, pa.s.sionately overflowing all bounds, like a stream which can no longer be controlled.

”You need not repulse me so harshly, I should have gone in the moment when it became clear to me that the one thing I sought here--my father's heart--was denied me. I have never known a parent's love. My mother was estranged from me, of my father I only knew that he lived on this side the Atlantic, and had cast me off because he hated my mother.

I came against my will, because I neither knew nor loved you. I only feared you. I came because my uncle said that you were lonely and embittered, and in spite of your wealth had no happiness in life; that you needed love, and that I alone could give it to you. By those means he forced me to follow him, in spite of my opposition, and by those means has he ever prevented me when I begged to return home. But now he will not wish to detain me, and if he did, I would tear myself away.

Keep your wealth, father, that which you think has brought me to you.

It has brought no blessing to you; I knew it long ago, and hear it again in your words. If you were poor and desolate I would try to love you, now I cannot. I will leave you within the hour!”

The unmeasured violence with which these words were spoken, or rather with which they rushed from Frida's lips had something terrible in it, but it also betrayed something which produced a more powerful effect than all the prayers and pet.i.tions could have done--the resemblance between the father and the daughter.

In the ordinary course of life the resemblance between the girl of sixteen and the already grey-haired man might have disappeared, or only have been remarkable occasionally; here, in the moment of highest excitement, it found such overwhelming, such convincing expression, that every doubt vanished on the spot.

Sandow must have seen it whether he would or not. Those were his eyes, which flamed before him, that was his voice which rang in his ears, that was his own dark, unbending obstinacy which now turned against himself. Trait by trait he saw himself reproduced in his daughter. The voice of blood and nature spoke so loud and convincingly that even the long treasured illusion of the father began to yield.

Frida turned to her uncle.

”In an hour I shall be ready to start! Forgive me, Uncle Gustave, that I have so badly carried out all your teaching, that I have rendered useless all your self-sacrifice, but I cannot do otherwise!”

She threw herself wildly on his breast, but only for a moment, then she tore herself away, fled past her father, and rushed like a hunted thing through the garden towards the house.

As Sandow saw his daughter in his brother's arms, he made a movement as if to tear her away, but his hand fell powerless by his side, and he sank as if crushed upon a seat, and buried his face in his hands.

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