Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/494
even around the greenhouse where he was watering the flowers. Like birds they would wheel about him, now showing themselves, now hiding—they would flash among the bushes, disappear in the thicket. They would put their heads very close together, as if telling each other secrets, or call across to each other some humorous bit of nonsense; or sometimes sadly and languidly, overcome by this love-sickness, they would walk thru the garden paths.—They went a-wooing, both the little girls.
Once, while Ida was playing Mozart’s Sonata in C major, Bertha ran out by herself, for strawberries,—and to find the sapphire eyes.—She leaped across the ditch, scrambled up the escarpment, to see how the strawberries were ripening—then, just as her foot touched the ground, a stone slipped and rolled down, and a great fat frog hopped out so suddenly that Bertha screamed. But what she did not tell, even to Ida, was that perhaps she would not have become so frightened, and would not have screamed so, had she not caught a glimpse of a huntsman’s cap nearby. “What is the matter with the little lady?” an amiable voice behind her asked. “Why it’s nothing but a frog!” But Bertha, wanting to be pitied in her startled helplessness, said, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m terribly afraid.” A booted foot stamped, a stone flew from his hand and landed in the grass, a smile fluttered in the blue eyes, and—nothing. But to nine-year-old Bertha, it seemed that this gallant rescue brought her closer to—the eyes of sapphire.
Maybe it was a week, perhaps a fortnight later, that the two little girls were racing along the sun-flecked shadows of the garden. They ran along the path and on the grass, and around Hugo’s window, which was wide open. Shyly and timidly, in the midst of their skipping, they peeped in.—The room was empty, not a soul in it. Like kittens they crept nearer, like thieves they stole up, silently, without a sound. Their inquisitive little eyes had a good opportunity to admire the cupboard and the lamp on top of it, and the shabby coat hanging on the nail, and the table, on which stood a pair of cuffs, one thrust into the other. But suddenly, all at once, the eyes were arrested by a single object. On the table stood a framed picture of a woman, a young woman. It might have been a sister, but to them it was she—their rival; one rival for both the little girls. For a long time they stood there, for a long time they gazed on that picture, and then, no longer quietly, they ran off together.
And in the corner of the salon they talked of his ungratefulness and faithlessness, of his treachery, black as sin. They cried a little over it, scolded a little; but all at once they thought of something. Just exactly as Hugo, with his deceiving eyes of sapphire, was untrue to them, just so could the lady in the picture be unfaithful to him—and then perhaps they could take the woman’s place. Which of them would he choose? Ida, altho she did not say it aloud, decided it would be herself, for was she not only the older, but the prettier also? And Bertha? She was certain it would be herself. Did he not gallantly rescue her on the embankment? But she did not speak of this to Ida. But this nothing worried the little girls as they sat embracing each other, nor kept them from musing and prattling of the treacherous depth of the sapphire ayes.
Just as anything has its end, so the harmonious love of these two little girls had its end, without quarrels or rupture, an end altogether sudden, just as the beginning.
On this day it was not hot, but the rain fell at intervals, and the wind rocked the branches peeping in at the windows. Now and then a swallow flew thru the trees, its white breast and dark-bluish tail glancing against the clouded sky. Late in the forenoon the door in the vestibule creaked, steps resounded on the tiles, and someone knocked on the door. Neither Ida nor Bertha called “Come in!”—little girls never call “Come in!” The door opened, and there, huntsman’s cap in hand, stood he. They sat as tho frozen to their chairs. He wished to know where the “gracious mistress was;” he wished to speak with her. A pause. A long pause. Then Bertha, younger and less confused, said she was in the kitchen. He bowed himself out, the door closed—that precious door, from which had gleamed those jewels, his eyes—retreating steps resounded, and the end came, tho the little girls knew it not.
As before, they could not utter a word, so now one talked faster than the other. They caught hold of hands and danced round and round. Then they decided that the question about his mistress was a mere excuse; that since they had not come out, he wanted to see them. They squeeled, and hurrahed, and sang and danced, and jumped about, and finally flew into a tempest of laughter, now quieting down, now bursting out again, till at last they both scrambled under the bed, so their mad, childish laughter would not be heard in the next room. They did not know why, but they laughed and laughed and laughed.
The next day when the sun shone out again, and the heavens turned blue, the little girls, in light colored dresses, went outdoors. They passed down the linden alley, threw some bread to the little fishes, loitered about the greenhouse, ran thru all the foot-paths, rested in the arbor, but—in vain. Bewildered, they wandered about the first day, restless the next; on the third day they asked about him. Of mamma? No, for they thought that even that question would betray them; but of the waiting maid, just casually, among other questions, one bending over an embroidery frame, the other with her face against the window-pane. Hugo was gone—why, the maid herself did not know; he had to