When, therefore, my little Katrine came to me one evening in the orchard and told me, half laughing, half crying, that Ulrich Finazzer had that day asked her to be his wife, I was utterly taken by surprise.
"I never dreamed that he would think of me, dear," she said, with her head upon my bosom. "He is so much too good and too clever for such a foolish birdie as poor little Katrine."
"But--but my birdie loves him?" I said, kissing her bright hair.
She half lifted her head, half laughed through her tears, and said with some hesitation:--
"Oh, yes, I love him. I--I think I love him--and then I am quite sure he loves me, and that is more than enough."
"But, Katrine----"
She kissed me, to stop the words upon my lips.
"But you know quite well, dear, that I never could love any lover half as much as I love you; and he knows it, too, for I told him so just now, and now please don"t look grave, for I want to be very happy to-night, and I can"t bear it."
And I also wanted her to be very happy, so I said all the loving things I could think of, and when we went in to supper we found Ulrich Finazzer waiting for us.
"Dear Johanna," he said, taking me by both hands, "you are to be my sister now."
And then he kissed me on the forehead. The words were few; but he had never spoken to me or looked at me so kindly before, and somehow my heart seemed to come into my throat, and I could not answer a word.
It was now the early summer time, and they were to be married in the autumn. Ulrich, meanwhile, had his hands full of work, as usual, and there was, besides, one important task which he wanted to complete before his wedding. This task was a Christ, larger than life, which he designed as a gift to our parish church, then undergoing complete restoration. The committee of management had invited him in the first instance to undertake the work as an order, but Ulrich would not accept a price for it. He preferred to give it as a freewill offering, and he meant it to be the best piece of wood-sculpture that had ever yet left his hand. He had made innumerable designs for it both in clay and on paper, and separate studies from life for the limbs, hands, and feet. In short, it was to be no ordinary piece of mere conventional Grodner Thal work, but a work of art in the true sense of the word. In the meanwhile, he allowed no one to see the figure in progress--not even Katrine; but worked upon it with closed doors, and kept it covered with a linen cloth whenever his workshop was open.
So the Summer time wore on, and the roses bloomed abundantly in our little garden, and the corn yellowed slowly on the hillsides, and the wild white strawberry-blossoms turned to tiny strawberries, ruby-red, on every mossy bank among the fir-forests of the Seisser Alp. And still Ulrich laboured on at his great work, and sculptured many a gracious saint besides; and still the one object of his earthly worship was our little laughing Katrine.
Whether it was that, being so grave himself, and she so gay, he loved her the better for the contrast, I cannot tell; but his affection for her seemed to deepen daily. I watched it as one might watch the growth of some rare flower, and I wondered sometimes if she prized it as she ought. Yet I scarcely know how, child that she was, she should ever have risen to the heights or sounded the depths of such a nature as his. That she could not appreciate him, however, would have mattered little, if she had loved him more. There was the pity of it. She had accepted him, as many a very young girl accepts her first lover, simply because he was her first. She was proud of his genius--proud of his preference--proud of the house, and the lands, and the worldly goods that were soon to be hers; but for that far greater wealth of love, she held it all too lightly.
Seeing this day after day, with the knowledge that nothing I could say would make things better, I fell, without being conscious of it, into a sad and silent way that arose solely out of my deep love for them both, and had no root of selfishness in it, as my own heart told me then, and tells me to this day.
In the midst of this time, so full of happiness for Ulrich, so full of anxiety for me, Alois Finazzer came home suddenly. We had been expecting him in a vague way ever since the Spring, but the surprise when he walked in unannounced was as great as if we had not expected him at all.
He kissed us all on both cheeks, and sat down as if he had not been away for a day.
"What a rich fellow I am!" he said, joyously. "I left only a grave elder brother behind when I went to Venice, and I come back finding two dear little sisters to welcome me home again."
And then he told us that he had just taken the gold medal at the Academy, that he had sold his prize-picture for two hundred florins, and that he had a pocketful of presents for us all--a necklace for Katrine, a spectacle-case for our mother, and a housewife for myself. When he put the necklace round my darling"s neck he kissed her again, and praised her eyes, and said he should some day put his pretty little sister into one of his pictures.
He was greatly changed. He went away a curly-headed lad of eighteen; he came back a man, bearded and self-confident.
Three years, at certain turning-points on the road of life, work with us more powerfully, whether for better or worse, than would ten years at any other period. I thought I liked Alois Finazzer better when he was those three years younger.
Not so Katrine, however--not so our mother--not so the St. Ulrich folk, all of whom were loud in his praise. Handsome, successful, gay, generous, he treated the men, laughed with the girls, and carried all before him.
As for Ulrich, he put his work aside, and cleared his brow, and made holiday for two whole days, going round with his brother from house to house, and telling everyone how Alois had taken the great gold medal in Venice. Proud and happy as he was, however, he was prouder and happier still when, some three or four days later, at a meeting of the Church Committee of management, the Commune formally invited Alois to paint an altar-piece for the altar of San Marco at the price of three hundred florins.
That evening Ulrich invited us to supper, and we drank Alois"s health in a bottle of good Barbera wine. He was to stay at home now, instead of going back to Venice, and he was to have a large room at the back of Ulrich"s workshop for a studio.
"I"ll bring your patron saint into my picture if you will sit for her portrait, Katrine," said Alois, laughingly.
And Katrine blushed and said, "Yes;" and Ulrich was delighted; and Alois pulled out his pocket-book, and began sketching her head on the spot.
"Only you must try to think of serious things, and not laugh when you are sitting for a saint, my little Madchen," said Ulrich, tenderly; whereupon Katrine blushed still more deeply, and Alois, without looking up from his drawing, promised that they would both be as grave as judges whenever the sittings were going on.
And now there began for me a period of such misery that even at this distance of time I can scarcely bear to speak or think of it. There, day after day, was Alois painting in his new studio, and Katrine sitting to him for Santa Catarina, while Ulrich, unselfish, faithful, trustful, worked on in the next room, absorbed in his art, and not only unconscious of treachery, but incapable of conceiving it as a possibility. How I tried to watch over her, and would fain have watched over her still more closely if I could, is known to myself alone. My object was to be with her throughout all those fatal sittings; Alois"s object was to make the appointments for hours when my household duties compelled me to remain at home. He soon found out that my eyes were opened. From that moment it was a silent, unacknowledged fight between us, and we were always fighting it.
And now, as his work drew nearer to completion, Ulrich seemed every day to live less for the people and things about him, and more for his art.
Always somewhat over-silent and reserved, he now seemed scarcely conscious, at times, of even the presence of others. He spoke and moved as in a dream; went to early ma.s.s every morning at four; fasted three days out of seven; and, having wrought himself up to a certain pitch of religious and artistic excitement, lived in a world of his own creation, from which even Katrine was for the time excluded. Things being thus, what could I do but hold my peace? To speak to Ulrich would have been impossible at any time; to speak to my darling (she being, perhaps, wholly unconscious) might be to create the very peril I dreaded; to appeal to Alois, I felt beforehand, would be worse than useless. So I kept my trouble to myself, and prayed that the weeks might pa.s.s quickly, and bring their wedding-day.
Now, just about this time of which I am telling (that is towards the middle of August) came round the great annual fete, or Sagro, as we call it, at Botzen; and to this fete Katrine and I had for some years been in the habit of going--walking to Atzw.a.n.g the first day by way of Castelruth; sleeping near Atzw.a.n.g in the house of our aunt, Maria Bernhard, whose husband kept the Gasthaus called the Schwarze Adler; taking the railway next morning from Atzw.a.n.g to Botzen, and there spending the day of the Sagro; and returning in the same order as we came. This year, however, having the dread of Alois before my eyes, and knowing that Ulrich would not leave his work, I set my face against the Botzen expedition, and begged my little sister, since she could not have the protection of her betrothed husband, to give it up. And so I think she would have done at first, but that Alois was resolute to have us go; and at last even Ulrich urged it upon us, saying that he would not have his little Madchen balked of her festa simply because he was too busy to take her there himself. Would not Johanna be there to take care of her, Alois to take care of them both? So my protest was silenced, and we went.
It is a long day"s walk from St. Ulrich to Atzw.a.n.g, and we did not reach our aunt"s house till nearly supper-time; so that it was quite late before we went up to our room. And now my darling, after being in wild spirits all day, became suddenly silent, and instead of going to bed, stayed by the window, looking at the moon.
"What is my birdie thinking of?" I said, putting my arm about her waist.
"I am thinking," she said, softly, "how the moon is shining now at St.
Ulrich on our mother"s bedroom window, and on our father"s grave."
And with this she laid her head down upon my shoulder, and cried as if her heart would break.
I have reproached myself since for letting that moment pa.s.s as I did. I believe I might have had her confidence if I had tried, and then what a world of sorrow might have been averted from us all!
We reached Botzen next morning in time for the six o"clock ma.s.s; went to high ma.s.s again at nine; and strolled among the booths between the services. Here Alois, us usual, was very free with his money, buying ribbons and trinkets for Katrine, and behaving in every way as if he, and not Ulrich, were her acknowledged lover. At eleven, having met some of our St. Ulrich neighbours, we made a party and dined all together at a Gasthaus in the Silberga.s.se; and after dinner the young men proposed to take us to see an exhibition of rope-dancers and tumblers. Now I knew that Ulrich would not approve of this, and I entreated my darling for his sake, if not for mine, to stay away. But she would not listen to me.
"Ulrich, Ulrich!" she repeated, pettishly. "Don"t tease me about Ulrich; I am tired of his very name!"
The next moment she had taken Alois"s arm, and we were in the midst of the crowd.
Finding she would go, I of course went also, though sorely against my inclination; and one of our St. Ulrich friends gave me his arm, and got me through. The crowd, however, was so great that I lost sight somehow of Alois and Katrine, and found myself landed presently inside the booth and sitting on a front seat next to the orchestra, alone with the St.
Ulrich people. We kept seats for them as long as we could, and stood upon the bench to look for them, till at last the curtain rose, and we had to sit down without them.
I saw nothing of the performance. To this day I have no idea how long it lasted, or what it consisted of. I remember nothing but the anxiety with which I kept looking towards the door, and the deadly sinking at my heart as the minutes dragged by. To go in search of them was impossible, for the entrance was choked, and there was no standing-room in any part of the booth, so that even when the curtain fell we were fully another ten minutes getting out.
You have guessed it, perhaps, before I tell you. They were not in the market-place; they were not at the Gasthaus; they were not in the Cathedral.
"The tall young man in a grey and green coat, and the pretty girl with a white rose in her hair?" said a bystander. "Tush, my dear, don"t be uneasy. They are gone home; I saw them running towards the station more than half an hour ago."
So we flew to the station, and there one of the porters, who was an Atzw.a.n.g man and knew us both, confirmed the dreadful truth. They were gone indeed, but they were not gone home. Just in time to catch the Express, they had taken their tickets through to Venice, and were at this moment speeding southwards.
How I got home--not stopping at all at Atzw.a.n.g, but going straight away on foot in the broiling afternoon sun--never resting till I reached Castelruth, a little after dusk--lying down outside my bed and sobbing all the night--getting up at the first glimmer of grey dawn and going on again before the sun was up--how I did all this, faint for want of food, yet unable to eat; weary for want of rest, yet unable to sleep--I know not. But I did it, and was home again at St. Ulrich, kneeling beside our mother"s chair, and comforting her as best I could, by seven.
"How is Ulrich to be told?"
It was her first question. It was the question I had been asking myself all the way home. I knew well, however, that I must be the one to break it to him. It was a terrible task, and I put it from me as long as possible.
When at last I did go, it was past mid-day. The workshop door stood open--the Christ, just showing a vague outline through the folds, was covered with a sheet, and standing up against the wall--and Ulrich was working on the drapery of a St. Francis, the splinters from which were flying off rapidly in every direction.
Seeing me on the threshold, he looked up and smiled.
"So soon back, liebe Johanna?" he said. "We did not expect you till evening."