Nevertheless she gave up the principle whenever a special case seemed to require an exception from the rule. Thus it had been with Sophie Roban. The privy councillor was the physician of the institution, and Miss Bear was under great obligations to him. Even her noble patrons, therefore, understood perfectly why she could not well refuse the widowed privy councillor, when he asked her to take for a few years a mother's place to his orphaned child.
Her relation to Sophie Roban was the best proof of the exaggeration which had given rise to so many fables about the dragon nature of Miss Bear. She had become a real mother to the motherless girl; she had guarded and protected her against every bodily and mental danger, not in order to earn her compensation honestly, nor for the sake of the reputation of her school, but because she loved the girl with her whole heart, as if she had been her own. Malicious people went so far as to say that she had not only raised but also spoiled the girl, and it could not be denied that Sophie--little Sophie, as the She Bear said--could dare what no other boarder, not even Emily von Breesen, who was at the same time there, and who passed for absolutely untamable, would ever have ventured to do. Sophie could interrupt Miss Bear in the most violent philippic against any wrong-doer who had done something especially horrible, _e. g._, cutting round holes in the curtains for the purpose of peeping at the people who passed by the house, and could fall upon her neck and say: Miss Mal, Miss Mal, I would not be so very angry if I were you! Sophie could at all times freely enter her study--that mysterious adytum to which the young ladies came with fear and trembling, and where the dispatches to their parents were prepared, and all their letters, coming and going, were subjected to rigorous scrutiny! Sophie could do what she chose.
These relations between teacher and pupil had ripened into a friendship of a peculiar nature after Sophie had left the school and become the presiding officer of her father's house. Miss Bear appreciated Sophie's good judgment, and did not disdain to consult the lady, young as she was, in critical cases; and what is more, she almost always followed the advice which her young friend gave, more in play than in good earnest, but always with perfect simplicity and impartiality. Such a case had occurred a few weeks ago, when the Baroness Grenwitz had expressed a wish to send her daughter Helen back for some time to the institution to finish her studies, especially in the sciences. Now such a step was remarkable enough in itself, as Miss Helen was coming straight from a well-known, superior school, in which she had spent four years; but it became still more embarrassing by the circumstance that the instructions which Miss Bear received from the baroness on one side, and from the baron on the other, differed essentially as to the degree of freedom to be granted the young lady. If Miss Bear obeyed the written instructions of the baroness, Helen was to be kept as a state prisoner, under latch and key; if she followed the requests made orally by the baron, when he brought, himself, his daughter to Grunwald, the young lady was to be left in absolute liberty. As both methods of education were equally incompatible with the system adopted in the school. Miss Bear was in great embarrassment, and turned, in her dilemma, to her young friend, to receive from her advice in this mysterious affair.
Fortunately Sophie had heard much from her betrothed about the state of things at Grenwitz, and what he had not explained she readily divined by the talent peculiar to all women of delicate feelings.
"They tried to marry Helen to a man unworthy of her," said the young lady, as she met her motherly friend soon after Helen's arrival in the mysterious adytum of her study, in order to confer with her about the Grenwitz affair, "and Helen has very properly refused to consent. In return, they have banished her for a time from her paternal home. You will surely not increase the hardship by being unnecessarily severe against the poor girl? Surely, Miss Mal, that would not be like you. Do what the father says: treat Helen not as a pupil--for that, she is too old; treat her as a young girl who has taken refuge with you from a tyrannical mother who ill-treats her, and from a father who is too weak to protect her. For that is, as far as I can see, the truth of the case."
When Sophie said so, she did, of course, not suspect Oswald's love for Helen, and Helen's love for Oswald, which, if known to her, would probably have made her speak somewhat differently; and afterwards, when Franz's reports about the catastrophe at Grenwitz, and many a word spoken by Helen herself, made her see more clearly this all-important point, she still did not change her advice, because she looked upon it as treason against a friend to tell others a secret of which she herself was not yet fully convinced. Helen, moreover, had become her friend in the meantime; at least she was most devotedly attached to the pretty girl, although she had reasons to doubt whether Helen, in her haughty pride and reserve, returned her love. It was mainly their common enthusiastic love for music which had brought the two young ladies so closely together. They soon found, not only that they shared this enthusiasm, but that they complemented each other in their knowledge of music as well as in their powers of execution. Sophie was the more learned; the mysteries of Thorough Bass--for Helen, a book with seven seals--were open to her; but Helen felt and appreciated music more fully. In comparison with Sophie, Helen was, on the other hand, a mere scholar on the piano, but she had a rich alto voice, as extensive as well trained, while Sophie said of herself that she had not a note in her throat.
Thus the two young ladies could play and sing by the hour, either in Helen's room at the institute, or more frequently in Sophie's parlor, without ever getting tired. Helen insisted that nobody had ever accompanied her as well as Sophie; and Sophie, that nothing had ever afforded her a greater musical enjoyment than Helen's sweet, melodious voice, full of deep feeling.
But, strange enough, although their souls met in the realm of music as kindred souls, and gave each other a sister's kiss, their tongues became silent as soon as they attempted to approach each other in human speech. Their conversation stopped frequently, and they had to turn again to music in order to fill a pause which threatened to become painful. Sometimes Sophie thought Helen was making a violent effort to break the charm which bound her in silence, but she never went in such moments beyond the first stammered sounds of intimacy, and the very next moment saw the young girl longing for friendship changed into the haughty lady of the world, calm in her self-satisfied repose, and unapproachable.
"She is a marble statue," said Sophie to her father, "in spite of her black hair, and her dark, brilliant eyes. You cannot get near to her. I believe she is secretly an Undine."
The privy councillor laughed.
"You may not be altogether wrong," he said; "for if the two entirely different elements, air and water, harbor also entirely different creatures, which cannot have real communion with each other, it is perfectly logical that different moral atmospheres, like that in which the nobles live and that in which we live, must also produce morally different beings, who can never become real friends with heart and soul. Have you formed any friendship, during the time you spent at Miss Bear's school, which has lasted beyond those years?"
"Yes, papa, with Miss Bear herself," answered Sophie, laughing.
"There you see," said the privy councillor, with his satirical smile, "one can become good friends with she bears even, but not with Undines."
Sophie was too young yet to be able to share the suspicions suggested to her father by his long life and ample experience. She explained Helen's reserve by her innate or acquired reluctance to come out of herself, and forgave her this shyness all the more readily as she was not quite free from it herself. She was herself generally looked upon as stern and cold, and many people declared openly that "she was not at all like other girls." "She cannot help it," she would say to herself, "and we ought not to expect to gather figs from thistles. Helen would be just the same to you if the Robans had been barons at the time of Charlemagne."
This view did greater honor to Sophie's head than to her worldly prudence, and she would have perhaps become a convert to her father's views, "that Undines can at least be intimate with Undines," if she had been able to look over Helen's shoulder on the afternoon of the third day after Oswald's arrival in Grunwald. Helen was writing to her friend, Miss Mary Burton (an Undine beyond doubt, for she belonged to an old and noble English family), and the delicate gold pen was flying fast over the paper. Helen wrote:
"This is the first time for a long, long time, dearest Mary, that I have the heart to answer your letters--for there is quite a pile lying before me. But I could not get the courage to write to you, who have now entered the great world, and have been presented at court--who are engaged, and about to become the wife of an English peer, that I, Helen von Grenwitz, to whom you prophesied such a brilliant future, have been sent back to boarding-school! sent to boarding-school, like a naughty girl; sent to boarding-school, like a gosling from the country! You wonder; you smile incredulously; you lisp your 'It is impossible!' and when you find at last that you have to believe my repeated assurances, you seize me with both your hands and cry: 'but, for God's sake, what does it mean? what can it be?' and you force me to tell you the whole story from the beginning. Well, I see no possibility to escape from the punishment, but you will find it natural that I shorten the pain as much as I can.
"Therefore, in short, if not for good:
"The relations with my mother, which I wrote to you before were so satisfactory, became worse and worse in consequence of my decided refusal to accept Felix as my husband, until an open rupture, which I had long seen coming, was inevitable. I have borne myself in the whole affair as I thought I owed it to myself and to you. It was a fierce battle, I assure you. To oppose my mother requires courage, and my father supported me but feebly, for he is feeble. Well! the battle is over; the dead are buried, and the wounds begin to heal. Yes, Mary! the dead. My Bruno, my pride, my knight, _sans peur et sans reproche_, my brother, my friend, my darling Bruno, is no more! He died fighting for me, and has breathed the last of his young, heroic soul in a kiss upon my lips. The fierce grief about this loss--for I only knew what he had been to me when I had him no longer--made me dull and indifferent to everything and everybody around me. As this boy loved me, no one on earth ever can and will love me again. I was light and air to him; I was meat and drink to him; I was waking and sleeping--I was life itself to him. How often have I laughed at him when he told me so, with glowing cheeks and bright eyes and trembling lips! And I said, 'Come, Bruno, none of your extravagancies! none of your fables! you are a little fool!' Now I would give many a year of my life if I could but hear it once more from his proud lips. A suspicion, which I cannot shake off, tells me that I would have found in Bruno and with Bruno all the happiness that this earth can afford; and that in losing him I have lost every prospect of happiness here below. You smile; you think: a boy! but I tell you, you did not know Bruno.
"Do not ask me to repeat everything in detail. I cannot do it. My heart is too full. The remembrance of my lost pet does not leave me for a moment, and I should like nothing better than to lay down my pen and to cry to my heart's content. Tell me, Mary, is it really our fate, as we have so often told each other in sad hours, to go through life unsatisfied, without joy, without happiness, without the hope that the future at least may bring us the fulfilment of our wishes? Is fortune ever to appear to us only as a _fata morgana_--charming in its beauty and treacherously fleeting? Or is it ever to present itself only in a shape which, however great the inner value may be, offends our delicacy--our prejudices, if you choose to call them so? Your lot, to be sure, it seems, is to be different. In the same circles to which you belong by birth and training, you have found the man who would have been dear to your heart even if your judgment should not have approved of the choice of your heart. A man, a hero, a lord! Happy, thrice happy you are to have found one to whom you have to look up, proud as you are! Smile with your aristocratic curve of the lip upon--your friend at the boarding-school!
"It is true, I am very comfortable at this boarding-school. They treat me, not as a pupil, but as a guest, and I am sincerely grateful to the principal, a Miss Bear, for her goodness, and the delicate consideration with which she treats me, as if she knew all. Perhaps she does know all. Such events, in families like ours, are not apt to remain unknown. Have I not myself learnt much about my own engagement only several weeks afterwards, and not from my father, with whom I have corresponded all the time, and who has even come to see me several times from Grenwitz (my mother, who I am told is here in Grunwald, has broken off all intercourse with me), but from a young lady, a Miss Sophie Roban, a former boarder here, whose acquaintance I have made, and with whom I have even formed a kind of friendship. She is engaged to our physician at Grenwitz, who has recently settled here, and thus her news seems to be reliable. She told me what had occurred after my departure from Grenwitz, and what papa had carefully kept from me; that the young man, of whom I wrote you already last summer, our tutor, Doctor Stein, has become my knight and my avenger, inasmuch, at least, as he has fought a duel with Felix, and given my great cousin a lesson which he will probably not forget very soon, as I learn from the same authority. I cannot tell you how strangely this news has affected me.
At first--I may confess to you--my pride was offended that my name should be coupled in the world with the name of a man like Mr. Stein; that a stranger, a hireling, should have assumed responsibilities for me, as if he were a relative, and my equal in rank. But then I thought of the old saying, 'that if the people were silent the stones would speak;' I remembered that a brother could not have behaved more brotherly, nor a knight more chivalrously toward me than this man had done from the first moment. I recalled, above all, that this man was my Bruno's dearest friend, and I forgot my pride, and felt, not without wondering at myself, that I could be grateful to this man for his great kindness and affection without feeling, as I generally do, that this gratitude weighs upon me as a burden. Nay, even more, I felt the desire to see him, who was abroad, once more, in order to thank him in person, and when I saw him to-day, quite unexpectedly, pass by the window at which I was sitting, I felt--you will laugh at me, Mary--I felt that as I returned his bow the blood rushed into my face. When he had gone by I could not help following him with my eye, and then I leaned back in the window and wept bitter tears over the memory of Bruno, which the appearance of Stein had suddenly and powerfully revived in my mind. I wish I could speak to him undisturbed.
"But I must break off here. I hear Miss Roban, who comes to play with me, and Miss Bear, in the next room."
Helen rose to meet the two ladies, who had entered the room upon her _entrez_! Sophie Roban passed Miss Bear and embraced Helen, with an affectionate haste which contrasted somewhat with the calm and dignified carriage of the young aristocrat.
"I have really longed to see you, Helen! Why have you not come to see me since the other night, when you promised to call again? Miss Mal has not put her veto upon it?"
"_Point du tout_," replied Miss Bear, pushing her glasses on the top of her head, in order to look more freely at the large, friendly blue eyes of her favorite. "You know, little Sophie, that Helen is perfectly free to dispose of her time. But that was not what I came for, dear Helen!
Here is a letter for you; one of your servants brought it; I suppose it is from your father?"
Helen took the letter with a slight acknowledgment, cast a glance at the direction, and said: "Yes, indeed; from my father!" and put it on her portefeuille, which she had closed when the two ladies entered.
"I will not interrupt you any longer," said Miss Bear. "Little Sophie comes to carry you home with her. Shall I send a servant for you?--and when?"
"You are surely coming, Helen?" said Sophie, who had taken a seat on the stool before the piano, and was looking at a collection of music.
"I have received some beautiful new songs. A splendid one by Schumann; we must look at it together."
"With all my heart," replied Helen. "But I cannot well stay long, because I must finish a letter for England to-night, so that I can send it off to-morrow morning. I am much obliged to you. Miss Bear, for the servant; but I shall be back before dark."
"As you like it, dear Helen," said Miss Mal, kissing first Helen very lightly on the forehead, and then Sophie Roban very heartily; "_adieu, mes enfants_."
And Miss Bear slipped her spectacles down again upon her nose, wrinkled up her brow in imposing severity, and rustled back to her sanctum, from which Sophie had unearthed her a few minutes before.
"How is your father to-day?" asked Helen.
"Thanks," replied Sophie, still looking at the collection of music; "he is much better; he has stayed up to-day a couple of hours longer. But now read your letter, Helen, and then get ready. We must go."
"Directly," said Helen, opening her letter, while Sophie was reading the music. A few moments later she looked up and found Helen holding the letter in one hand, which hung down, while her head rested in the other, and she was evidently deep in thought. The long lashes concealed the bright eyes, and the dark eyebrows were contracted as if in indignation.
"What is the matter?" cried Sophie, hastily closing the book and putting it down on the piano. "Have you had bad news?"
"Oh no?" replied Helen, who had gathered herself up at the first sound of Sophie's voice, and tried to smile. "Oh no! Papa will be here to-morrow, that is all!"
"To stay?"
"Yes!"
"And you--Helen?"
"I was just thinking about that. My father leaves the choice to me, but----"
The young girl paused, and assumed the same half-thoughtful, half-wrathful expression of face. She seemed to have forgotten Sophie's presence. All of a sudden she asked, her eyes still cast down,
"Would you, if you had been insulted, be the first to offer the hand for reconciliation?"
Sophie was seriously embarrassed by this question, the meaning of which she could easily divine. Helen had never spoken to her about her affairs, not even in allusions. She was not to know anything of them, therefore, and yet it did not suit Helen's candor, and her friendship for Helen, to affect an ignorance and an indifference which were not real.
"That depends," she replied, after a short pause, "on what the offence was, and above all, who was the offending person!"
"How so?"
"There are offences, I think, which only become such by our own making, and offenders who can never be such--who ought never to be such--I mean persons who stand so near to us, with whom we are so closely united by nature, that it would be unnatural, if----"
"They hated us," interrupted Helen, quickly. "But if such a case did occur: if those hated each other for once, who ought to love each other; if they persecuted and warred against each other, who ought to support, help, and bear one another--how then?" Helen had risen; her face was all aglow; her eyes sparkled; her hands were firmly closed--the image of a person rejoicing in combat and prepared for victory or death, but never for surrender.
"I do not know," replied Sophie, affecting a calmness which she did not possess; "I only know that I for my part could never be placed in such a position. I could never hate brother or sister, much less father or mother who gave me life, happen what would. Are they not--myself? And how can one hate one's own self?"
"Are you quite so sure of that?" answered Helen. "How do you know it?
You never had brother or sister; your mother died very early; your father has, as you told me yourself, always overwhelmed you with unbounded affection; but I--I have other----"