“He won’t blame you,” said Grollmann, passing his hand through his grey hair; “he thinks too much of you; I will risk it.”
“Do so,” said Reinhold, “on my authority, and do not trouble yourself any more about it. I am convinced that your first idea was correct, and that it was a threatening letter. You know my uncle; he fears nothing.”
“God knows it,” said Grollmann.
“But it has vexed and excited him still more, when he had already come back vexed and excited from the meeting. These are troublesome times for him, which must be gone through. We must be prepared for bad days till the good ones come again.”
“If they ever do come,” said Grollmann.
The old man had left the room; Reinhold tried to return to the work he had begun, but he could not collect his thoughts. He had tried to comfort the old man, yet he himself now felt uneasy and troubled.
If his uncle did not learn to moderate himself, if he continued to look and to treat in this passionately tragical way an affair which, near as it lay to his heart, was in fact a matter of business and must be considered from a sober, businesslike point of view, the bad days might indeed last long, inconveniently long, for all concerned—“to whom I myself belong now,” said Reinhold.
He stood up and went to the window. It was a raw, disagreeable day. From the low-hanging clouds was falling a fine, cold rain; the tall trees rustled in the wind, and withered leaves were driven through the grey mist. How different had it looked when a few days ago—it was only a very few, though it seemed to him an eternity—he had looked down here one morning, for the first time. The sky had been such a lovely blue, and white clouds had stood in that blue sky so still, it seemed as if they could not weary of contemplating the beautiful sun-lighted earth, on which men, surrounded, indeed, by the smoke of chimneys and distracted by the noise of wheels and saws, must earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, though the sun shone brightly and the birds sang cheerily in the thick branches—that earth on which there was so much pleasure, and love, and blessed hope, even in the heart of a poor blind girl, and a thousand times more for him who saw all this beauty spread out before him, doubly glorious in the reflection of the love which shone and glittered through his heart as the sun through the dewdrops on the leaves. And because the sun was now for a time hidden behind a cloud, was all the glory passed away? Because a few hundred idle men had cast their tools from their horny hands, must everyone feel life a burden, and refuse to carry that burden any longer? No; a thousand times no! The sun will shine again; the men will return to their duty; and you, happy man—thrice happy man—for whom the sun shines in spite of all in your innermost heart, return to your work, which for you is no hard duty, but rather a joy and an honour.
Reinhold greeted with eyes and hand the neighbouring house, one window of which he had long ago discovered between the branches of the plane trees, which he watched more eagerly than any star; and then hoped that Ferdinanda, whom he suddenly perceived in the garden, would take his greeting to herself if she had seen him.
She could hardly have seen the greeting, and could not even have seen him at the window as she walked up and down between the shrubs, under the rustling trees, without appearing to notice the rain which was falling on her. At any rate she was without hat, without umbrella, in her working dress, without even a shawl; sometimes standing still and gazing up into the driving clouds, then walking on again, her eyes turned to the ground, evidently sunk in the deepest thought.
“Curious people, those artists,” thought Reinhold, while he seated himself again at his work. “What a fool you were to think that her heart could beat for any creature of flesh or blood, or, indeed, for anything but her Reaping Girl and Boy, if she has a heart at all.”
In the meantime Grollmann was standing undecided at the top of the staircase, before the door leading to his master’s room.
His conscience was not quite satisfied by Reinhold’s assurance that he would take the responsibility on himself, if the master overslept himself. Should he go downstairs? should he go in? He must make up his mind; it was a . “If only something would occur to oblige me to wake him,” said Grollmann.
At that moment he heard the door open on the lower floor, and someone came up the stairs. Grollmann looked over the banisters; an officer—a general—the old General from over the way. “That is curious,” thought Grollmann, and stood at attention, as was fitting in an old servant who had been a soldier.
The General had come up the stairs. “I wish to speak to Herr Schmidt; will you announce me?”
“It is not exactly his hour for receiving,” said Grollmann; “and—”
“Perhaps he will receive me, however, if you tell him that I have come on most important business; here is my card.”
“It is not necessary, General. I have the honour, General—”
“Take the card, all the same.”
Grollmann held the card undecided in his hand; but, if the business was so important—and he could not very well send a general unceremoniously away. “Will you excuse me a minute. General?”
The old man slipped through the door. The General looked gloomily around on the broad carpeted marble steps with their gilt banisters, on the dark, gilded folding-doors which led on three sides out of the gallery in which he stood, while the fourth wall, in which was the window, was decorated
