Jezebel's Daughter
Page 6
temper was not excited) of speaking sensibly and strongly on any subject
in which he was interested. Mr. Engelman, short and fat, devoted to the
office during the hours of business, had never read a book in his life,
and had no aspiration beyond the limits of his garden and his pipe. "In
my leisure moments," he used to say, "give me my flowers, my pipe, and my
peace of mind--and I ask no more." Widely as they differed in character,
the two partners had the truest regard for one another. Mr. Engelman
believed Mr. Keller to be the most accomplished and remarkable man in
Germany. Mr. Keller was as firmly persuaded, on his side, that Mr.
Engelman was an angel in sweetness of temper, and a model of modest and
unassuming good sense. Mr. Engelman listened to Mr. Keller's learned talk
with an ignorant admiration which knew no limit. Mr. Keller, detesting
tobacco in all its forms, and taking no sort of interest in horticulture,
submitted to the fumes of Mr. Engelman's pipe, and passed hours in Mr.
Engelman's garden without knowing the names of nine-tenths of the flowers
that grew in it. There are still such men to be found in Germany and in
England; but, oh! dear me, the older I get the fewer I find there are of
them.
The two old friends and partners were waiting for me to join them at
their early German supper. Specimens of Mr. Engelman's flowers adorned
the table in honor of my arrival. He presented me with a rose from the
nosegay when I entered the room.
"And how did you leave dear Mrs. Wagner?" he inquired.
"And how is my boy Fritz?" asked Mr. Keller.
I answered in terms which satisfied them both, and the supper proceeded
gaily. But when the table was cleared, and Mr. Engelman had lit his pipe,
and I had kept him company with a cigar, then Mr. Keller put the fatal
question. "And now tell me, David, do you come to us on business or do
you come to us on pleasure?"
I had no alternative but to produce my instructions, and to announce the
contemplated invasion of the office by a select army of female clerks.
The effect produced by the disclosure was highly characteristic of the
widely different temperaments of the two partners.
Mild Mr. Engelman laid down his pipe, and looked at Mr. Keller in
helpless silence.
Irritable Mr. Keller struck his fist on the table, and appealed to Mr.
Engelman with fury in his looks.
"What did I tell you," he asked, "when we first heard that Mr. Wagner's
widow was appointed head-partner in the business? How many opinions of
philosophers on the moral and physical incapacities of women did I quote?
Did I, or did I not, begin with the ancient Egyptians, and end with
Doctor Bernastrokius, our neighbor in the next street?"
Poor Mr. Engelman looked frightened.
"Don't be angry, my dear friend," he said softly.
"Angry?" repeated Mr. Keller, more furiously than ever. "My good
Engelman, you never were more absurdly mistaken in your life! I am
delighted. Exactly what I expected, exactly what I predicted, has come to
pass. Put down your pipe! I can bear a great deal--but tobacco smoke is
beyond me at such a crisis as this. And do for once overcome your
constitutional indolence. Consult your memory; recall my own words when
we were first informed that we had a woman for head-partner."
"She was a very pretty woman when I first saw her," Mr. Engelman
remarked.
"Pooh!" cried Mr. Keller.
"I didn't mean to offend you," said Mr. Engelman. "Allow me to present
you with one of my roses as a peace-offering."
_"Will_ you be quiet, and let me speak?"
"My dear Keller, I am always too glad to hear you speak! You put ideas
into my poor head, and my poor head lets them out, and then you put them
in again. What noble perseverance! If I live a while longer I do really
think you will make a clever man of me. Let me put the rose in your
buttonhole for you. And I say, I wish you would allow me to go on with my
pipe."
Mr. Keller made a gesture of resignation, and gave up his partner in
despair. "I appeal to _you,_ David," he said, and poured the full flow of
his learning and his indignation into my unlucky ears.
Mr. Engelman, enveloped in clouds of tobacco-smoke, enjoyed in silence
the composing influence of his pipe. I said, "Yes, sir," and "No, sir,"
at the right intervals in the flow of Mr. Keller's eloquence. At this
distance of time, I cannot pretend to report the long harangue of which I
was made the victim. In substance, Mr. Keller held that there were two
irremediable vices in the composition of women. Their dispositions
presented, morally speaking, a disastrous mixture of the imitativeness of
a monkey and the restlessness of a child. Having proved this by copious
references to the highest authorities, Mr. Keller logically claimed my
aunt as a woman, and, as such, not only incapable of "letting well
alone," but naturally disposed to imitate her husband on the most
superficial and defective sides of his character. "I predicted, David,
that the fatal disturbance of our steady old business was now only a
question of time--and there, in Mrs. Wagner's ridiculous instructions, is
the fulfillment of my prophecy!"
Before we went to bed that night, the partners arrived at two
resolutions. Mr. Keller resolved to address a written remonstrance to my
aunt. Mr. Engelman resolved to show me his garden the first thing in the
morning.
CHAPTER X
On the afternoon of the next day, while my two good friends were still
occupied by the duties of the office, I stole out to pay my promised
visit to Minna and Minna's mother.
It was impossible not to arrive at the conclusion that they were indeed
in straitened circumstances. Their lodgings were in the cheap suburban
quarter of Frankfort on the left bank of the river. Everything was
scrupulously neat, and the poor furniture was arranged with taste--but no
dexterity of management could disguise the squalid shabbiness of the
sitting-room into which I was shown. I could not help thinking how
distressed Fritz would feel, if he could have seen his charming Minna in
a place so unworthy of her as this.
The rickety door opened, and the "Jezebel" of the anonymous letter
(followed by her daughter) entered the room.
There are certain remarkable women in all countries who, whatever sphere
they may be seen in, fill that sphere as completely as a great actor
fills the stage. Widow Fontaine was one of these noteworthy persons. The
wretched little room seemed to disappear when she softly glided into it;
and even the pretty Minna herself receded into partial obscurity in her
mother's presence. And yet there was nothing in the least obtrusive in
the manner of Madame Fontaine, and nothing remarkable in her stature. Her
figure, reaching to no more than the middle height, was the well-rounded
figure of a woman approaching forty years of age. The influence she
exercised was, in part, attributable, as I suppose, to the supple grace
of all her movements; in part, to the commanding composure of her
never fully opened in my remembrance, looked at me under heavy
overhanging upper eyelids. Her enemies saw something sensual in their
strange expression. To my mind it was rather something furtively
cruel--except when she looked at her daughter. Sensuality shows itself
most plainly in the excessive development of the lower part of the face.
Madame Fontaine's lips were thin, and her chin was too small. Her profuse
black hair was just beginning to be streaked with gray. Her complexion
wanted color. In spite of these drawbacks, she was still a striking, I
might almost say a startling, creature, when you first looked at her.
And, though she only wore the plainest widow's weeds, I don't scruple to
assert that she was the most perfectly dressed woman I ever saw.
Minna made a modest attempt to present me in due form. Her mother put her
aside playfully, and held out both her long white powerful hands to me as
cordially as if we had known each other for years.
"I wait to prove other people before I accept them for my friends," she
said. "Mr. David, you have been more than kind to my daughter--and _you_
are my friend at our first meeting."
I believe I repeat the words exactly. I wish I could give any adequate
idea of the exquisite charm of voice and manner which accompanied them.
And yet, I was not at my ease with her--I was not drawn to her
irresistibly, as I had felt drawn to her daughter. Those dark, steady,
heavy-lidded eyes of hers seemed to be looking straight into my heart,
and surprising all my secrets. To say that I actually distrusted and
disliked her would be far from the truth. Distrust and dislike would have
protected me, in some degree at least, from feeling her influence as I
certainly did feel it. How that influence was exerted--whether it was
through her eyes, or through her manner, or, to speak the jargon of these
latter days, through some "magnetic emanation" from her, which invisibly
overpowered me--is more than I can possibly say. I can only report that
she contrived by slow degrees to subject the action of my will more and
more completely to the action of hers, until I found myself answering her
most insidious questions as unreservedly as if she had been in very truth
my intimate and trusted friend.
"And is this your first visit to Frankfort, Mr. David?" she began.
"Oh, no, madam! I have been at Frankfort on two former occasions."
"Ah, indeed? And have you always stayed with Mr. Keller?"
"Always."
She looked unaccountably interested when she heard that reply, brief as
it was.
"Then, of course, you are intimate with him," she said. "Intimate enough,
perhaps, to ask a favor or to introduce a friend?"
I made a futile attempt to answer this cautiously.
"As intimate, madam, as a young clerk in the business can hope to be with
a partner," I said.
"A clerk in the business?" she repeated. "I thought you lived in London,
with your aunt.
Here Minna interposed for the first time.
"You forget, mamma, that there are three names in the business. The
inscription over the door in Main Street is Wagner, Keller, and Engelman.
Fritz once told me that the office here in Frankfort was only the small
office--and the grand business was Mr. Wagner's business in London. Am I
right, Mr. David?"
"Quite right, Miss Minna. But we have no such magnificent flower-garden
at the London house as Mr. Engelman's flower-garden here. May I offer you
a nosegay which he allowed me to gather?"
I had hoped to make the flowers a means of turning the conversation to
more interesting topics. But the widow resumed her questions, while Minna
was admiring the flowers.
"Then you are Mr. Wagner's clerk?" she persisted.
"I _was_ Mr. Wagner's clerk. Mr. Wagner is dead."
"Ha! And who takes care of the great business now?"
Without well knowing why, I felt a certain reluctance to speak of my aunt
and her affairs. But Widow Fontaine's eyes rested on me with a resolute
expectation in them which I felt myself compelled to gratify. When she
understood that Mr. Wagner's widow was now the chief authority in the
business, her curiosity to hear everything that I could tell her about my
aunt became all but insatiable. Minna's interest in the subject was, in
quite another way, as vivid as her mother's. My aunt's house was the
place to which cruel Mr. Keller had banished her lover. The inquiries of
the mother and daughter followed each other in such rapid succession that
I cannot pretend to remember them now. The last question alone remains
vividly impressed on my memory, in connection with the unexpected effect
which my answer produced. It was put by the widow in these words:
"Your aunt is interested, of course, in the affairs of her partners in
this place. Is it possible, Mr. David, that she may one day take the
journey to Frankfort?"
"It is quite likely, madam, that my aunt may be in Frankfort on business
before the end of the year."
As I replied in those terms the widow looked round slowly at her
daughter. Minna was evidently quite as much at a loss to understand the
look as I was. Madame Fontaine turned to me again, and made an apology.
"Pardon me, Mr. David, there is a little domestic duty that I had
forgotten." She crossed the room to a small table, on which
writing-materials were placed, wrote a few lines, and handed the paper,
without enclosing it, to Minna. "Give that, my love, to our good friend
downstairs--and, while you are in the kitchen, suppose you make the tea.
You will stay and drink tea with us, Mr. David? It is our only luxury,
and we always make it ourselves."
My first impulse was to find an excuse for declining the invitation.
There was something in the air of mystery with which Madame Fontaine
performed her domestic duties that was not at all to my taste. But Minna
pleaded with me to say Yes. "Do stay with us a little longer," she said,
in her innocently frank way, "we have so few pleasures in this place." I
might, perhaps, have even resisted Minna--but her mother literally laid
hands on me. She seated herself, with the air of an empress, on a shabby
little sofa in the corner of the room, and beckoning me to take my place
by her side, laid her cool firm hand persuasively on mine. Her touch
filled me with a strange sense of disturbance, half pleasurable, half
painful--I don't know how to describe it. Let me only record that I
yielded, and that Minna left us together.
"I want to tell you the whole truth," said Madame Fontaine, as soon as we
were alone; "and I can only do so in the absence of my daughter. You must
have seen for yourself that we are very poor?"
Her hand pressed mine gently. I answered as delicately as I could--I said
I was sorry, but not surprised, to hear it.
"When you kindly helped Minna to get that letter yesterday," she went on,
"you were the innocent means of inflicting a disappointment on me--one
disappointment more, after others that had gone bef
ore it. I came here to
place my case before some wealthy relatives of mine in this city. They
refused to assist me. I wrote next to other members of my family, living
in Brussels. The letter of yesterday contained their answer. Another
refusal! The landlady of this house is an afflicted creature, with every
claim on my sympathies; she, too, is struggling with poverty. If I failed
to pay her, it would be too cruel. Only yesterday I felt it my hard duty
to give her notice of our departure in a week more. I have just written
to recall that notice. The reason is, that I see a gleam of hope in the
future--and you, Mr. David, are the friend who has shown it to me."
I was more than surprised at this. "May I ask how?" I said.
She patted my hand with a playful assumption of petulance.
"A little more patience," she rejoined; "and you shall soon hear. If I
had only myself to think of, I should not feel the anxieties that now
trouble me. I could take a housekeeper's place to-morrow. Yes! I was
brought up among surroundings of luxury and refinement; I descended in
rank when I married--but for all that, I could fill a domestic employment
without repining my lot, without losing my self-respect. Adversity is a
hard teacher of sound lessons, David. May I call you David? And if you
heard of a housekeeper's place vacant, would you tell me of it?"
I could hardly understand whether she was in jest or in earnest. She went
on without waiting for me to reply.
"But I have my daughter to think of," she resumed, "and to add to my
anxieties my daughter has given her heart to Mr. Keller's son. While I
and my dear Minna had only our own interests to consider, we might have
earned our daily bread together; we might have faced the future with
courage. But what might once have been the calm course of our lives is
now troubled by a third person--a rival with me in my daughter's
love--and, worse still, a man who is forbidden to marry her. Is it
wonderful that I feel baffled, disheartened, helpless? Oh, I am not
exaggerating! I know my child's nature. She is too delicate, too
exquisitely sensitive, for the rough world she lives in. When she loves,
she loves with all her heart and soul. Day by day I have seen her pining
and fading under her separation from Fritz. You have revived her hopes
for the moment--but the prospect before her remains unaltered. If she
loses Fritz she will die of a broken heart. Oh, God! the one creature I
love--and how I am to help her and save her I don't know!"
For the first time, I heard the fervor of true feeling in her voice. She
turned aside from me, and hid her face with a wild gesture of despair
that was really terrible to see. I tried, honestly tried, to comfort her.
"Of one thing at least you may be sure." I said. "Fritz's whole heart is
given to your daughter. He will be true to her, and worthy of her,
through all trials."
"I don't doubt it," she answered sadly, "I have nothing to say against my
girl's choice. Fritz is good, and Fritz is true, as you say. But you
forget his father. Personally, mind, I despise Mr. Keller." She looked
round at me with unutterable contempt flashing through the tears that
filled her eyes. "A man who listens to every lie that scandal can utter
against the character of a helpless woman--who gives her no opportunity
of defending herself (I have written to him and received no answer)--who
declares that his son shall never marry my daughter (because we are poor,
of course); and who uses attacks on my reputation which he has never
verified, as the excuse for his brutal conduct--can anybody respect such
a man as that? And yet on this despicable creature my child's happiness
and my child's life depend! For her sake, no matter what my own feeling