And Lucy? — must her spotless life be offered up with his? Edward’s soul shrunk from the needless sacrifice, and after pausing on his way for many minutes with clasped hands and downcast eyes in earnest meditation, he turned back, once more relieved by the conviction that it was his duty to send his sister from him.
Never was there a human soul on which virtue had a stronger hold than that of Edward Bligh. Once more persuaded that he was doing right, his serenity returned, his mind recovered its wonted power, and he again believed himself capable of great and glorious actions.
He now determined upon once more seeking Frederick Steinmark. He had already made a second visit to Reichland; but the father of the family was in his fields, and he would not enter. With a spirit invigorated by renewed confidence in himself, Edward proceeded to the happy dwelling of his new friend. He was again ushered into the common sitting-room, and again stood before the noble German forester; but not, as before, was Frederick Steinmark the only object upon which his eye now rested. Standing beside him as he sat in his accustomed chair, with one hand resting on its high back, and the other lovingly caressing the scanty curls of her father, stood Lotte, certainly much fairer than the daughters of man if taken at their usual standard, and with a look at once so innocent and so brightly beaming with intelligence and joy, that it is impossible to conceive anything more likely to seize upon such an imagination as that of Edward, than was her figure as thus presented to him. He gazed for one short moment only, but her image thenceforward became the idol of his fancy, till every throbbing pulse was hushed for ever.
Lotte was engaged, when young Bligh approached, in pleading earnestly for some favour about which her smiling father seemed to hesitate. She stopped short however in her eager speech as soon as she saw him, and somewhat abashed by the ardent but involuntary gaze of the young man, curtsied slightly and prepared to depart.
Lotte knew perfectly well, however, who he was; for her father, though he carefully kept Cæsar’s secret, had given so animated and faithful a description of the forest schoolmaster that she could not mistake him; and had he looked at her with less evident wonder and admiration, she would have greatly wished to become acquainted with a person who had so deeply interested her father. As it was, perhaps she was not sorry when Frederick Steinmark, while he held out one hand to welcome Edward, retained her with the other.
“You must not run away, Lottchen,” said he. “Mr. Bligh, this is my only daughter; and there,” pointing to the open portico before the windows, “are four idle sons of mine, as much bent upon a thriftless frolic as if they were in fatherland, where gentles eat the corn they do not reap. Your coming is a godsend for them. I really believe I shall now grant their petition, — which is for us to go, one and all, to eat our dinner and pick strawberries in a meadow behind Karl’s mill, — that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to my whole family with as little delay as possible.”
Edward answered with as much grace as any man could be expected to do who was in the very act of falling desperately in love for the first time in his life.
“That is well then,” said Steinmark, in reply to Edward’s timid acceptance of the invitation; “and you may now go, Lotte, and announce to your mother, and the noisy party she has got round her, that it is my patriarchal will and pleasure this wild-goose scheme should take place; whereby we shall lose the decent comforts of my farmhouse board in order to gain the extraordinary gratification of eating a meal like so many houseless Bohemians. Away with ye!”
Lotte bounded across the long room and through the window, whereupon the arrival of her and her news at the portico was announced by a discharge of hurrahs that seemed to make the welkin ring; and the instant after, the whole party dispersed and were out of sight, some in one direction, some in another, in order to collect the multitudinous articles of which the luxuries of a dinner on the grass must be composed. Lotte darted off to the garden to seek lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, and all, the other solid delicacies with which that metropolis of the vegetable kingdom abounds.
Even in the transient glance which Edward caught of her figure as she glided past the other windows, he perceived that she went not alone. He perceived too, to his sudden and unspeakable torment, that the stately figure which accompanied her seemed bending to converse with her with a sort of courtly assiduity, that, highly as he rated brother’s love among earthly affections, could not proceed from one who stood in that relation.
“Now, my friend, we are alone,” said Steinmark, “my wild flock are on the wing, and I may venture to tell you that our poor runaway is perfectly restored to health and strength after his weary travel and long fast; but I think it would be as well for you not to attempt seeing him at present.”
Such were the words of Frederick Steinmark, addressed to the man who, a few days before, had spoken on this subject with a degree of feeling and agitation that it was almost painful to witness. And how did he listen to it now? His eyes fixed upon the spot at which he had seen Lotte disappear, his ears insensible of the sounds that reached them, and his whole person having the air of a man sleeping rather than waking, he stood before Steinmark heart-struck, silent, and immovable.
The kind-tempered German smiled as he watched a fit of absence more completely absorbing to the faculties than any, as he believed, that he had ever himself indulged in. But sympathising with the malady, and feeling that it deserved all indulgence, he treated Edward exactly as he would have wished to be treated himself on all similar occasions; that is to say, he left him unmolested to recover his wits, while he pursued the lecture which the petition of Lotte had interrupted.
The pang which had transfixed Edward, though it left a wringing anguish at his heart which his after-life was not long enough to cure, kept not his senses enchained beyond one or two dreamy moments; and he then started with a mixture of astonishment and offended pride at seeing Steinmark reading composedly in his easy chair, while he stood unnoticed before him.
Edward turned to go; but before he had taken a second step, the recollection of the party about to set off for the meadow, the invitation he had received to join it, and the gratitude he owed for the important kindness already bestowed, made him turn again, and in a voice which many conflicting feelings caused to tremble, he said:
“I fear, sir, that I have intruded on you very inconveniently.”
Steinmark raised his eyes, and instantly perceived an expression of wounded feeling in the countenance of his interesting guest.
“Intruded, Mr. Bligh? No, no! But, do you know, I suspect that, over and above the points of resemblance which we mutually discovered in each other when last we met, I may now shake hands with you on the discovery of another. My saucy children tell me that I am the most absent man alive, but I think you beat me. Now, tell me, did you hear one word of all I said to you about Cæsar?”
“Cæsar, sir?” repeated Edward, while a tingling consciousness of the cause of his strange inattention crimsoned his cheeks. “I beg your pardon: certainly I did not hear you name Cæsar. How is he, sir?”
“You could not have indulged in a fit of absence before anyone more bound to forgive it than myself,” replied Steinmark, laughing; “and therefore I will repeat my assurances that your protegé is as well as if he had never missed a meal or feared a flogging. But what are we to do with him next, my good friend?”
Once more awakened to thoughts of earth, Edward entered eagerly and with most anxious feeling into the subject. He stated the reasons he had for believing that the slave-holders throughout the country were more on the alert than ever to discover and punish all delinquencies among their slaves, and hinted his serious apprehensions that Mr. Steinmark himself might suffer for the pitying kindness he had extended to the poor runaway.
“I do not think that, even were the thing discovered, they could punish me for the misdemeanour in any way that would materially annoy me,” replied the German composedly; “but tell me, Mr. Bligh, has anything occurred to you since we met la
st to suggest the idea that these bloodhounds are more vindictive than formerly?”
Edward hesitated. “Before my answer to this question can be intelligible, my dear sir,” he said,” I think I must become for a short space my own biographer.”
“You could not please me better,” replied his host, with a look and accent that might have given courage and confidence to the most modest spirit that ever shrunk from such a task; “and indeed,” he added, “you stand partly bound to this by promise. The preparations for our rural feasting will occupy the projectors of it for a full hour, I doubt not; and I will lead you to a spot where they will be sure to seek me, but less liable to interruption than this, where I can meanwhile enjoy the gratification I so greatly wish for, of knowing something more about a man so singularly unlike those amongst whom fate has thrown him.”
He led the way to the open window as he spoke, and having left the room, proceeded across the lawn to a bank of turf raised under the shelter of a noble tulip-tree. A semicircle of fine orange-trees nearly enclosed it in the front, but leaving an opening to a small flower-garden, so evidently of feminine arrangement, that Edward, as he took his seat upon the bank, felt almost as if he was again in the presence of the wondrous creature who had flashed across his sight more, as he thought, like a vision of light than a reality.
It was indeed a lovely nook — sheltered, cool, fragrant and sequestered, well-suited both for confidence and repose; and here Edward Bligh recounted the sad incidents of his life, and the singular position in which they had left him and his young sister, with a simple pathos that went to the very heart of the good German, and created a feeling of admiration and attachment to both the orphans which he was far from attempting or intending to express in words.
“But why, in the name of kind feeling and good fellowship, Edward, is not your dear Lucy with us here? If our situations had been reversed — if you had had the home and I the sister, she would not have been now in Mrs. Shepherd’s store at Natchez. So there is not such perfect sympathy between us, Bligh, after all.”
But there was moisture in the eye of Steinmark as he spoke; and as he uttered this reproach, he held out his hand to the object of it. Edward grasped that friendly hand with deep emotion, and replied with perfect frankness:
“Nor do I think I could have had the heart to place her there after seeing you, had it not been for Cæsar, and for the weight of obligation I had already taken on myself for his sake. To have thrown another upon your bounty, even though that other was my sister; merely because I read your generous heart in your eyes, would have been like extortion, — I could not do it.”
“Surely you blundered egregiously, my young friend, in placing two such acts, as hiding a runaway negro in a country where murder has been repeatedly committed to punish those who would befriend the race, and receiving your glorious sister Lucy as a friend and inmate upon the same footing. In the first case, I freely confess that I do think I showed myself to be a very good-natured fellow, and that you ought to make me your best bow for receiving so dangerous a guest as Cæsar; but for the second, I most truly believe that the obligation would be much more on our side than yours. You may partly guess, Edward, how profound must be the retirement in which we live; and would it be a slight good, think you, for my Lotte to have, for the first time in her life, such a companion as your gentle, patient, and accomplished Lucy?”
There was something most deliciously soothing to the feelings of Edward in the idea that it was possible his sister might become the favoured and favourite friend of Lotte Steinmark. He murmured some few words expressive of grateful feelings, and his countenance spoke more eloquently than his tongue; but Frederick Steinmark was far from guessing what a rush of unspeakable gratitude his words had produced; for, in most simple truth, he meant exactly what he said, in declaring that the society of such a girl as the Lucy of Edward’s narrative would be an inestimable blessing to his daughter.
“This day,” resumed Steinmark, “will make you in some degree acquainted with my family. But there is also a young stranger with us, a countryman, who has wandered thus far from the fatherland solely for the gratification of a wandering fancy. My eldest son made acquaintance with him in Philadelphia, and has brought him to his forest home; and this Sigismond von Hochland really seems to deserve all the fine things our Fritz says of him. Nevertheless, I cannot allude to your touching story, Edward, before him, till you shall yourself know him sufficiently to admit him to your friendship: but my wife must hear it, and her invitation will then be joined to mine for the speedy arrival of your dear sister among us. And yet,” continued Steinmark thoughtfully after a moment’s silence, “eager as I am for this, I do believe it will be more prudent to get Cæsar off the premises before she arrives. Should he unhappily be discovered here, I fear that both you and your Lucy might suffer much inconvenience were your share in the transaction to be traced. I suspect that, even now, you are in some degree a marked man among these abominable slave-drivers, Edward. The absence of your woodland congregation on Sunday night most decidedly indicates alarm amongst them; and I think, therefore, that I must counsel you, contrary as it is to my wishes, to let your sweet sister remain where she is for a few days. You are quite right not to be seen with her at Natchez; but perhaps, on the Sabbath, if she meets you in the forest, as you talk of, we might arrange our idle Sunday ramble so as to effect an introduction without bringing her to Reichland. It may be some consolation for her to know that she has friends so near her.”
This conversation respecting Lucy, her situation, and her feelings, did more towards restoring Edward entirely to himself than anything else could have possibly done. He most entirely agreed with Steinmark that there was the greatest necessity, for all their sakes, that the utmost caution should at this moment be used in everything with which they were mutually concerned: and this being admitted, they set to scheming and planning, proposing and rejecting, a number of devices for the disposal of Cæsar.
But their consultations were soon interrupted, their privacy invaded, and all thoughts for the future put to flight, by the appearance of the party which approached them from the house.
CHAPTER IV.
FAR in advance of the rest was Hermann. It was he who, as usual, undertook to find his father and, more difficult far, to rouse him from whatever occupation or reverie might have thrown its chains over him, and to bring him to join the joyous set who were starting off for Karl’s Erdbeere Feld, as the not far-distant place of their destination was constantly called by all the family; though the young miller very gravely declared, that if it produced no crop more valuable than the erdbeeren from which they chose to name it, he would plough it up in spite of them all. Notwithstanding this assumption of prudence in the lord of the land to which they were going, there was not one of the set who appeared to enter into the strawberry frolic with more zeal than himself. With his mother on one arm, and a huge basket on the other, Karl came next in order, the very emblem of youth, health, and cheerfulness. His large straw hat seemed rather to be suspended upon some sturdy bunch of his thick sunny curls, than to be fixed in the ordinary mode upon his head; while his laughing blue eyes looked out from under it as if to challenge the anticipated exclamations its extraordinary position might elicit.
Mary, who looked, as her husband often told her, a great deal too pretty and too young to be the mother of so stalwart a youth, walked beside him, looking up into his bright young face with an eye almost as mirthful as his own, though in sage and sober accents she repeated once and again —
“Karl! Karl! what will your countryman — a baron too! — think of your wild ways? Be sober, Karl, or upon my word, I must fall back upon the squadron behind. What a very queer boy you are! Whenever you are more than commonly disposed to be whimsical, it seems to me that you always select me for your companion. I am afraid I have very little dignity, Karl.”
“Not the very least bit in the world, mother. Now, if you were only in the slightest degree like my ever reve
renced, honoured, and honourable aunt Karoline, born Baroness Von Uberkümpher, how differently would all your children treat you! But don’t take on, mother, — it can’t be helped now; so you may as well bring down your spirit to your condition, and submit to be loved and adored by your republican children, just as if there was no such thing as dignity in the world.”
Behind the mother and son followed the unrustic figure of Fritz, very carefully and cautiously driving a wheelbarrow containing all the weightier matters necessary to the feast; and the procession closed by a trio, consisting of Lotte, Sigismond Von Hochland, and Henrich.
When they first started, Henrich was as usual at Lotte’s side; but ere they reached the orange-trees, the description Von Hochland was giving her of the scenery near his own residence in Westphalia won him from it, and the stranger was now walking between them. The gay and animated young man spoke in his native tongue, which, though native also to his companions, was no longer their ordinary language, and it had for both of them a charm which certainly increased the pleasure with which they listened to him. Lotte, though her gayer spirits prevented her pining for the land of her birth with the intense longing after it which embittered the existence of her brother, had nevertheless drunk in its poetry, and revelled in the descriptions of its scenery, till she too was as devotedly a child of Germany in her heart as himself; and loved its voice, and its music, its storied castles, and its sunny hills, as if she remembered the early days she had passed among them. The arrival of Sigismond was certainly the most animating event that had ever broken the monotony of their peaceful lives; and perhaps it was some consciousness of the pleasure he gave which inspired the animated expression his handsome countenance wore, as he rapidly poured forth his recollections and his feelings to the willing ears of the brother and sister.
But though earnestly engaged in conversation, they were nevertheless as actively assisting as the rest of the party in the business of the day. Henrich bore in each hand a basket of something, he knew not what, which Karl had committed to his charge; Sigismond had swung over his shoulder with very reverend care a delicate frail, filled with salad, entrusted to him by Lotte; while the fair maiden herself very daintily balanced between her two hands, at first setting out, a little basket without a handle, packed by herself, wherein, womanlike, she had mixed utility with elegance; for it contained cream from her own pretty dairy, enough, according to Hermann’s instructions, to drown all Karl’s strawberries, together with abundance of sweet-scented flowers to strew around the spot they should select for the scene of their repast. But as Sigismond grew more animated, this double-handed caution became more embarrassing, for she could not look towards him without endangering the balance; so at length she stopped, saying, “Henrich, do you not think we could contrive to envelope my cream and flowers in a napkin, and then swing it over a stick, as Herr Sigismond has done his frail?”
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 20
