He knew that Ferdinanda was no longer in her study, but yet his gleaming eyes remained fixed on her door as he sat here brooding in the twilight.
“I will do everything that he commands. He is very wise, very powerful, and very wealthy; but what good can he do here? Is not she now even more unhappy than she was before? And if she should ever find out that it was I—but the signor is right there, one thing always remains to me—the last, best of all—revenge!”
VII
Latterly, while Ferdinanda still kept her bed, Uncle Ernst hardly left his room, and the Schmidt family circle therefore was to a great extent broken up, the two friends had divided their evenings between it and the Kreisels pretty regularly as they said, or very irregularly as Aunt Rikchen said. Reinhold was forced to agree with his aunt, and attempted no further excuses, as he did not want to tell any untruths, and could not acknowledge the true reason. The real truth was that his aunt’s perpetual complaints threatened to destroy his last remnant of cheerfulness, while on the contrary he found the comfort and consolation that he so greatly needed in the atmosphere of sunshine which the sweet blind girl diffused around her. Latterly, indeed, even this sunshine had been a little clouded. The two friends had a suspicion, which they did not however impart to the poor girl, that the eccentric old gentleman, having made up his mind, as he said, that he could no longer with honour remain a Socialist, had sacrificed his dislike to speculation to the darling wish of his heart, to provide for Cilli after his own death, and had been speculating eagerly with the scanty means that he had toilsomely scraped together in the course of years. He was very mysterious about it indeed, and denied it roundly when Justus laughingly taxed him with it; but Justus would not be deceived, and even thought he could gather, from a casual expression the other had let fall, that it was the doubtful star of the Berlin-Sundin Railway to which the old man had confided the fragile bark of his fortunes. It seemed some confirmation of this opinion that latterly, when the almost worthless shares had become, in consequence of the new and dazzling prospectus, an object of the wildest speculation, and had consequently risen to double their value, the old gentleman’s cheerfulness had returned also, and he had even ventured upon some of the dry witticisms which he only uttered when he was in the brightest spirits. Cilli said that now everything went well with her, and Reinhold, as she asserted this with her sweet smile, tried to stifle another and much worse anxiety—an anxiety which he had once hinted to Justus, whereupon the latter had replied in his careless fashion: “Nonsense! Love is a weakness, angels have no weaknesses; Cilli is an angel, and so—basta!”
He found Cilli alone in the modest little sitting-room, in the act of arranging the tea-things on the little round table in front of the hard, faded old sofa. She performed such small household duties with a confidence which would have quite deceived a stranger as to her infirmity, and with a grace which always had a fresh charm for Reinhold. She would not permit any assistance either. “It is cruel,” said she, “not to let me do the little that I can do.”
So he sat now in the sofa corner, which was always his place—the other belonged to her father when he came in from the office—and looked on as she came and went with her gliding step, and as often as she returned to the table seemed smilingly to bid him welcome again and again.
“Where is Justus!” asked she.
“He has just gone to dress.”
“How far has he got with you?”
“I shall be finished tomorrow, or the day after.”
“Then it will be my turn; I am looking forward to it so—I mean to the portrait. I should so like to know what I look like. However often I do so”—she drew her soft finger slowly along her profile—“and that is just like looking in the glass, yet you never know how you look till a great artist shows it to you in your portrait. Justus is going to do me in life-size too.”
“But he might have given you that small satisfaction long ago.”
“It is not a small thing, even though he does work so wonderfully quick,” answered Cilli eagerly; “every hour, every minute is precious to him; he owes them all to his work. Now that he can make use of me for his work, it is different of course.”
“Do you know then, dear Cilli, what we all look like?”
“Perfectly; you are a tall man, with curly hair and beard, and a broad forehead, and blue eyes. Justus is not so tall, is he?”
“He is a little shorter, dear Cilli.”
“But only a very little,” Cilli went on triumphantly; “and his hair is not so thick, is it?”
The last words were said with some hesitation.
“Not at the temples, dear Cilli.”
“Only not at the temples, of course!” said Cilli quickly; “but his great beauty is in his eyes—great, flashing artist’s eyes, which can take in a whole world! Oh, I know what you both look like, and my father too! I could draw his portrait!”
She laughed happily and then suddenly became grave.
“That is why I am distressed, too, when the faces I love are not cheerful. Justus’s face is always cheerful, but then he is an artist, and can only live in sunshine; my father, too, has recovered his old cheerfulness, and now you must return to what you were at first—do you remember?”
“Indeed I do, dear Cilli. So many things have happened since then; you know what I mean. They have troubled me, and trouble me still. And then Justus is right, I am an
