CHAPTER V.
THE LION AND THE MOUSE.
On the following evening, Sara, when she arrived at the Wilhelmis’, found a large, gay party assembled, consisting chiefly of those who had distinguished themselves in the lebenden Bildern the night before, or who had given useful service in preparing them. Sara was almost shocked to recognise, amongst others, little Frau Goldmark, for whose benefit the entertainment had been given. To her intense nature it appeared strange and even indecorous that the young widow should present herself in this sparkling mixed company—under the circumstances. Certainly she did not put herself forward; she sat on an ottoman, in a rather retired corner, from which she did not move, and those who desired to have speech of her could do so by going and talking to her. Sara found herself near her during the evening, and, at the moment, no one else was close to them. She turned and spoke to her, wishing her good-evening rather gravely. Indeed, since yesterday afternoon, she had felt grave, though by no means sad. She had reflected upon Falkenberg’s strictures, and the more she thought upon the subject the more convinced she was that he had spoken the words of justice—of truth and soberness.
‘Ah, Miss Ford!’ exclaimed Frau Goldmark, effusively, ‘how very much I have to thank you for!’
‘Do not mention it, Frau Goldmark. What little I could do, I did with great pleasure; and I am very glad if it succeeded.’
‘ Ach, ungeheuer!’ cried she, using an exaggerated expression not beloved of Sara, who wondered more and more that the little woman had not had the sense to remain at home—‘ Ungeheuer! it will be a small fortune to me. It is entirely your influence, of course, liebes Fräulein, which has induced Herr Falkenberg to be so generous. And I, who had been thinking that the picture was only so much buried capital, that never would be realised!’
‘I am afraid I don’t understand you,’ said Sara, becoming conscious that some event of which she knew nothing was alluded to, and aware, too, of a disagreeably significant meaning in the smile with which Frau Goldmark looked at her.
‘But you must know surely that, yesterday morning, Herr Falkenberg went straight to the Ausstellung, where my husband’s picture hung, and that he bought it—bought it then and there; and when Herr Lohe of the Ausstellung said that it was a fine picture, Herr Falkenberg replied that to anyone who had seen Miss Ford in that character the night before, it could not fail to be a fine picture. Now, what do you think?’
Frau Goldmark laughed, never having imagined that she would have the good fortune to be the first to communicate this news to Miss Ford. The reply surprised and appalled her.
‘I think your information most uncalled for, and that, if true, it is not of the slightest importance to me,’ replied the young lady, raising her head to its utmost height, and, without deigning another word, walking away.
Frau Goldmark recoiled. She had imagined that the information would be considered most piquant and gratifying, and behold, the result had been annihilation almost.
Though Sara had walked away with such dignity, a most unpleasant sensation had taken possession of her. It was most unlike all she knew of Falkenberg that he should make such a vulgar remark as that would certainly have been; and yet the glibness with which Frau Goldmark had repeated it, staggered her. She stood, absently conversing with Ludwig Maas, the very man with whom she had acted in the picture, and was chiefly conscious of repenting bitterly that she had ever taken any part in the affair, and Herr Maas was wondering a little why Miss Ford, who, with all her dignity, had been so sociable and pleasant to him two days ago, should wear so cold and unapproachable an expression this evening, when Falkenberg came up to them.
‘Miss Ford,’ said he, ‘I have been talking to Frau Goldmark.’
‘Indeed!’ was the frigid reply.
‘I had better go,’ decided Ludwig within himself; and with a murmured excuse he left them.
‘Yes,’ pursued Rudolf. ‘I saw that she had offended you by something she had said. She is a tiresome, vulgar little woman, who used to annoy me a good deal in former days when I had dealings with her husband.’
‘I can quite imagine it,’ said Sara, ‘but as I feel quite indifferent towards her, we need not talk about her.’
There was a laugh in Falkenberg’s eyes as he said:
‘But I do not feel at all indifferent towards her, finding as I do, that she has been misrepresenting me to you.’
Sara’s face flushed, and her head was lifted again.
‘Pray let us leave the subject,’ she said.
‘No, I must ask you as a favour to hear me. Frau Goldmark has a way of putting the cart before the horse sometimes, which, if innocent, is still annoying. She told you that I had said to Herr Lohe—something which, if I had said it, under the circumstances, would have been the height of impertinence, though the poor little woman seems to imagine that it was a charming compliment.’
‘Well, and did you not say it?’ she asked, still in the same unapproachable manner.
‘Can you for a moment suspect me of it? I observed to Herr Lohe that it was a charming picture, upon which he threw up his hands, exclaiming, “ Ach! mein Herr, it was always charming, but since one has seen Miss Ford in it, it is à ravir.”’
Sara smiled involuntarily. Herr Lohe was a well-known character in the Elberthal artist world. The words and the manner were so exactly his, that she could no longer have even a shade of doubt on the matter.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, all the stiffness melting suddenly from her attitude and expression, ‘for ever listening to such a story. It took me by surprise.’
‘Now you look less terrible, and more human,’ he said, laughing; ‘less like those “snows so pure, those peaks so high,” to which the poet said he lifted “a hopeless eye.”’
‘You are laughing at me,’ said Sara, laughing in her turn. ‘I felt insulted, I confess. What a tiresome, mischievous little woman that is!’
‘Very. But,’ he added earnestly, and in a low voice, ‘you were not insulted yesterday, when I said some rather strong things to you, the reverse of complimentary, and yet now——’
‘That was quite different,’ she replied, her cheek flushing again. ‘And you know it, Herr Falkenberg; but you wish to torment me because you think I am exaggerated in everything.’
‘Since that is your opinion of my opinion of you, let it stand,’ was all he would reply.
Frau Goldmark sat in her corner, and watched the proceedings from afar. After having been made so much of for so long, this was a grievous way in which to be treated. Her feelings were assuredly akin to those expressed by the oysters when the walrus and the carpenter threatened to eat them.
‘ Lieber Himmel!’ thought Frau Goldmark, who was accustomed, even mentally, to the use of exaggerated expressions, ‘how could I know? But who does know what will please an Englishwoman? Not I, I am sure. I wish I had given her back her stare, but I never have my wits about me at the right moment, and I dare say she thought I was overwhelmed with confusion. And when he came up to me’—here an expression akin to cunning developed itself upon Frau Goldmark’s face—‘these men think they have but to speak, and that then we believe them. He “thought I had made a mistake,” indeed. Whether I may have been mistaken about that or not, can I not see him now, talking to her, and the look in his eyes? Bah! it is easy enough to see what it all means. People like her think they have a right to toss their heads if one hazards a joke. Would not she be glad enough to catch him, if she could? And if she does, will it not be through me that they have been brought together—their happiness made out of my misfortune? Ach, ja!’
Which leads one to reflect that there is a celebrated fable concerning a lion and a mouse, which relates how the former magnanimously thanked the latter on being set free from his toils through that humble agency—leads one also to wonder a little what some mice might feel supposing they had received favours of crushing importance from the kingly beast, and had later been rebuked for flippancy of behaviour. Perhaps the feelings of the mouse on such an occasion might not be altogether without resemblance to those just now entertained by Frau Goldmark towards her two most substantial benefactors.
Late the following evening, Falkenberg was pacing up and down the space jutting out from the Hofgarten towards the river, and known as the Schöne Aussicht. (Schöne Aussicht—Belle Vue—Bella Vista: why have we no name for it in England, we who have so much of the thing itself?) It was the very hour which Sara had mentioned as being her favourite one for strolling about. Had Falkenberg had any idea of meeting her there? Hardly. He was scarcely the man to go with such a purpose, especially in the case of Sara Ford. He had come, partly because he wished to be alone, and partly because she had said she loved the place. So much he confessed to himself; nor did it disturb him in that he knew it was a dream that he cherished.
He was thinking about her now as he paced about, thinking of what she had said about loving to watch the river, the Rhine. Falkenberg watched it too, as it flowed majestically along, eleven hundred feet across, from one low flat bank to the other, making a low, sedate music as he seemed to march by, with his grand, broad, unintermittent sweep, having gathered in might and volume during his long journey past castle and crag and town, between the walls of Mainz and beneath the frowning escarpments of Ehrenbreitstein, between rock and vineyard and village and hamlet, until he came to proud Cologne, the fairest gem in his crown, and then, broader and stronger and older and greyer, went sweeping on past the other villages and towns, towards Rotterdam and Holland and the sea.
Rudolf saw not another human creature. He ceased his walk, and placed himself on one of the benches looking towards the river, and, leaning his elbow on the back of it, smoked, and abstractedly watched a great American Rhine steamer, with Kaiser Wilhelm inscribed on her paddle-box, which was steaming slowly into the harbour to stay there and be repaired before the next tourist season began. The lights on her poop and deck cast bright rays athwart the sullen grey of the stream, but he did not see them though he was looking at them.
‘I wish she was not engaged to this fellow,’ he thought. ‘It’s young Wellfield, I suppose, unless I was very much deceived by what I saw at Trockenau that night. I may do him injustice, but I have an idea that when all comes to the point, he will look first to his precious self. It is not surprising if he is both vain and selfish, after the ordeal he has gone through of flattery and gratuitous love affairs and desperate cases, and girls who have made fools of themselves about him. But it is a pity that at last a noble woman should have fallen a victim. God forgive me if I do the lad injustice. I hope I do. One can but wait the event.’
He knocked the ash from his cigar, and gazed across the river at the outline, now very dim, of a battered-looking tree on the opposite shore.
‘It is time I came to some conclusion,’ he thought. ‘I have been dangling here long enough. I have her friendship—I see and know that her love is given elsewhere. It would be simple madness in me to try to win it. I am only burning my fingers and making a fool of myself by remaining here—and getting more in love with her every day.... Ay, and I do love her!’
He flung his cigar away, and leaned forward, gazing intently out into the darkness, thinking.
‘If ever I had the chance of marrying her—if by any means I could induce her to take me, I would do it, let the risk be what it might.... Shall I stay a little longer? Is the pleasure worth the concomitant pain? When I know that I may not tell her I love her, any more than she, if she loved me, could tell me so.’
As he thus reflected, and reflected, too, that it was all a chance—everything was a chance—he watched how two men on the big steamer threw out a rope to two men in a little boat which was rocking in the swell in the wake of the big one. Twice they threw, and missed; then prepared to cast it out a third time.
‘If they catch it this time,’ decided Rudolf, ‘I’ll stay; if they miss again, I’ll say good-bye to her to-morrow, and go home.’
A third throw of the rope, a lurch of the little boat, and the cry:
‘ Gut! Jetzt hab’ ich’s.’
‘I stay. Gut! I take my holiday in Elberthal instead of in Rome. What does it matter to anyone but myself?’
He arose, and walked straight back to Wilhelmi’s house, where there was, as usual, a large company, many of whom had been invited expressly to meet him. He went amongst them, and made himself agreeable to them for the rest of the evening. He promised himself a month’s holiday from now. The chances were—for something happening to Sara, to Jerome, to anyone, which should lead events in the direction he desired—one. Against that, ten thousand. And for the sake of the one he stayed.