“I fear you have never been so in your heart.”
“And if I have not been so, whose fault is it but yours? Have you ever shown me the love that a child is entitled to ask from its father? Have you ever done anything to make the life you gave me a happy one? Has my industry ever drawn from you a word of praise, or my success a word of acknowledgment? Have you not rather done everything to humble me in my own eyes, to make me smaller than I was in reality, to insult my art, to make me feel that in your eyes I was no artist and never should be one—that you looked on all this as nothing better than a large doll’s house, which you had bought for me in order that I might trifle and idle away my worthless time here! And now, now you come to tear my love from me, only because your pride wills it so—only because you consider it an insult that such a poor, useless creature should will, or wish anything that you do not wish and will! But you are mistaken, father; I am, in spite of all, your daughter. You may repudiate me, you may drive me to misery, as you might dash me in pieces with that hammer, because you are the stronger; but you cannot tear my love from me!”
“I both can and will.”
“Try!”
“To try and to succeed are one. Would you be the mistress of Lieutenant von Werben?”
“What has that question to do with my love?”
“Then I will put it in another form. Have you the face to make yourself the equal of those wretched, foolish creatures who give themselves to a man, whether without marriage or in marriage—for marriage does not mend matters—for any other price than that of love, for which they give their own in exchange? Herr von Werben has nothing to give you in exchange; Herr von Werben does not love you.”
Ferdinanda laughed scornfully. “And he has come to you, of whom he knew that you pursue him and his kind with blind hatred, to tell you that?”
“He has not come; his father was forced to take the hard step for him, for which he himself had not the courage, for which the father had to force the son’s consent.”
“That is—”
“Not a lie! On my oath. And further, he did not even go to his father of his own free will; he would not have done so today, he would perhaps never have done it, if his father had not sent for him to ask him if it were true what the sparrows said on the housetops, and what insolent wretches wrote in anonymous letters to the unsuspecting fathers, that Lieutenant von Werben had a love affair on the other side of the garden-wall, or—what do I know!”
“Show me the letters!”
“Here is one; the General will doubtless willingly let you have the other. I doubt whether his son will lay claim to it.”
Ferdinanda read the letter.
She had taken it for granted that only Antonio could have been the traitor; but this letter was not from Antonio, could not be from Antonio. So that other eyes than the love-inspired, jealous eyes of Antonio had seen through her secret. Her pale cheek glowed in angry shame. “Who wrote the letter?”
“Roller; in the letter to the General, he has not disguised his hand.”
She gave the letter hastily back to her father and struck her hands together, as if she wished to remove all trace of its touch: “Oh, the shame, the shame!” she murmured; “oh, the disgrace! the horror of it!”
The dismissed overseer had been at first received in the family, till Ferdinanda saw that he had dared to raise his eyes to her; she had taken advantage of a dispute he had had with her father first to loosen and then to put an end altogether to his relations with the family. And the insolent, evil eyes of this man—“Oh, the shame! oh, the disgrace!” she murmured again.
She paced rapidly up and down, then hastened to the writing-table, which stood at the far end of the long room, wrote a few hurried lines, and then came back with the note to her father, who had remained motionless on the same spot: “Read it!”
And he read:
“My father is ready to sacrifice his convictions for my sake and consents to my marriage with Lieutenant von Werben. I, however, for reasons which my pride refuses to write down, reject this marriage now and forever as a moral impossibility, and release Lieutenant von Werben from any obligation which he has, or thinks he has, towards me. This determination, which I have made of my own free will, is irrevocable; any attempt on the part of Lieutenant von Werben to overthrow it, I shall regard as an insult.
“Is that right?”
He nodded. “Am I to send him this!”
“In my name.”
She turned from him, and, with a modelling-tool in her hand, went up to her work. Her father folded the letter and went towards the door. There he remained standing. She did not look up, but appeared quite absorbed in her work. His eyes rested on her with an expression of deep sorrow. “And yet!” murmured he, “and yet!”
He closed the door behind him and walked slowly across the yard, through whose wide, empty space the storm was raging.
“Deserted and empty!” he murmured, “all deserted and empty. That is the burden of the song for her and me.”
“Uncle!”
He started from his gloomy musings. Reinhold came hurriedly from the house towards him—bareheaded and excited.
“Uncle, for heaven’s sake!—the General has just left me. I know all—what have you decided?”
“What must be.”
“It will be the death of Ferdinanda.”
“Better death than a life of dishonour.”
He stepped past Reinhold into the house. Reinhold did not venture to follow him; he knew that it would be useless.
