“I am convinced that you can save her,” he cried; “that a word from you would pierce to her troubled mind through all the horrors of a fevered fancy, and that she would awake to a new life.”
“And what would that word be?” asked Uncle Ernst.
“If your heart does not tell you, you would not understand it if I spoke it.”
“My heart only tells me that it would be a lie,” replied Uncle Ernst; “and as I understand life, no lie will restore it. What life would it be to which she would awake! Life at the side of a man whose courage holds out just so long as the darkness in which he has followed his course of intrigue; who only steps forth from that darkness when a villain tears off his mask, and he cannot endure his father’s eye upon his miserable face; who would do what he must today, driven on by the reproaches of his conscience and fear of the world’s opinion, only to repent it tomorrow from the same fear, and to hint it to her at first in a thousand different ways, and say it at last to her face. Is that a lot for a father to prepare for his child? No, never! Better a thousand times death, if she must needs die. Every man has his own way of looking at life, and this is mine; and no general officer, with I know not what confused ideas of honour and love, and no relation, however dear he may be to me, who in his good-nature would like to accommodate what never can be put straight, will ever teach me another. And if God Himself came and said to me, ‘You are wrong,’ I should answer, ‘I do right in my own eyes,’ and no God can demand more of man.”
“But you ought not to have urged Ferdinanda to a decision which cannot possibly have come from her heart.”
“Are not you attempting something of the same kind at this moment?”
“I have no authority over you, and your mind is not torn by conflicting feelings as Ferdinanda’s must have been in that unhappy hour.”
“So much the better, that one of us at least should know what he wishes and wills.”
That had been Uncle Ernst’s last word, and he had said it with a calmness that to Reinhold was more terrible than the wildest outburst of passion would have been.
And yet not so terrible as the smile with which the stubborn old man a few days later received the news that Ferdinanda was, in the doctor’s opinion, out of danger.
Reinhold could not forget that smile; it haunted him even in his dreams. He had never seen the like on any human face; he could not even describe it to Justus, to whom he had repeatedly mentioned it, till one day he stopped with a sudden exclamation at a face that stared at him from the wall in a remote corner of the studio.
“Good heavens, Anders, what is this!”
“The mask of the Rhondonini Medusa,” said Justus, looking up from his work.
“That was my uncle’s smile.”
“I dare say it was something like it,” said Justus, coming up with his modelling-tool in his hand, “although I cannot quite reconcile Uncle Ernst’s beard with the Medusa; but one sees sometimes such diabolical resemblances.”
Justus’s friendship was invaluable to Reinhold in these dark days; when he was almost giving way, the artist’s perpetually cheerful temper would keep him up. “I cannot understand you,” said Justus; “I certainly have every possible respect for Uncle Ernst’s splendid qualities, and I take really a sincere interest in Ferdinanda, to say nothing of Aunt Rikchen, poor soul, who will soon have cried her eyes out; but sympathy and pity and all that sort of thing, like everything else in the world, must have its limits, and if anything of the kind affects my own life and incapacitates me from working—why, then, you see, Reinhold, I say with Count Egmont: ‘This is a foreign drop within my veins!’ and—out with it! Have you written to the President?”
“Three days ago.”
“That’s right. Heaven knows how sorry I shall be to lose you; but you have been here too long already. You ought to have a ship’s planks under your feet again, and a northeaster whistling in your ears; that would soon blow your melancholy and hypochondria and all that well out of you, and clear your brain and your heart—you may take my word for it!”
“If only it comes to anything,” said Reinhold; “I almost fear, as the answer is so long in coming, that my report may have roused bad feelings in the other department as well, as the General prophesied it would.”
“Then we must think of something else,” answered Justus; “so smart a vessel must not be left to rot in the stagnant waters of a port. For the present you can sit to me occasionally as a model for my bas-relief; not that I want you yet, but one must gather the roses ere they fade. I will take your head now at once, life-size, to be sure of you in any case.” Justus set aside all other work, and busied himself over the designs for his bas-reliefs from morning till night, which came only too early for the busy worker. Two of them, the March Out and the Battle, were already finished, and the Ambulance Preparations had made great progress; but what was to be done about the Return? Heaven only knew! “And the idea was such a splendid one,” cried Justus. “You had been promoted to be an officer meanwhile, and were to be standing at attention in the right corner, your eyes left towards the charming burgomaster’s daughter, who, with the wreath in her hand, also turned her eyes right towards the smart lieutenant, while the
