"A pity no birds are singing," Frederick said one day to Miss Burns, who had opened his bedroom window wide.
"Yes," said Miss Burns, "it is a pity."
"Because," Frederick went on, "you say it is already greening on the banks of Lake Hanover."
"What does that mean—'greening'?" asked Miss Burns, who did not know the German word he had used. He laughed.
"It means spring is coming, and spring without the singing of birds is a deaf and dumb spring."
"Come to England. There's where you hear birds."
"You come to Germany, Miss Burns. There's where you hear birds," Frederick mimicked his friend's drawl.
When the time came for him to sit up for a while, he refused.
"I don't want to get out of bed. I feel too comfortable lying here," he declared.
Soon after the fever left him, he ceased to feel ill, and for the last week they had been bringing him books, entertaining him with stories and anecdotes of the neighbourhood, and reading the papers to him, all in moderation, of course. They divined his wishes from his eyes. His microscope was put beside his bed, and he set seriously to work to examine specimens from his own body, an occupation that brought many jests down on him. The horror of his illness had turned into a diversion, a pleasant subject of study.
It was not until he had left his bed and was sitting in a comfortable chair wrapped in blankets that he inquired whether a letter had not come from his parents. Miss Burns told him his father had written and recounted those things in his letter which she knew would please Frederick and ease his mind. She was astonished to hear the pale convalescent say:
"I am convinced poor Angèle took her own life. Well," he continued, "I have suffered what I had to suffer; but I will not reject the hand that I feel is graciously extended towards me. By that I mean," he added, thinking from the expression in Miss Burns's eyes that she did not understand him, "that for a' that and a' that, I am glad to be restored to life and confidence in life."
One day, while Miss Burns was telling of some eminent men in different countries with whom she had become acquainted, mild complaints escaped her, showing she had suffered disenchantments.
"In a year," she said, "I am going back to England, to some village, and devote myself to the education of neglected children. The sculptor's profession does not satisfy me."
"How would you like this, Miss Burns," said the convalescent, with a frank, roguish smile, "wouldn't you like to educate a rather difficult big child?"
Peter and Eva had agreed not to mention Ingigerd Hahlström's name. But one day Frederick handed Miss Burns a piece of paper with a verse written in lead pencil in a trembling hand.
"To whom does this refer?" he asked.
"Have threads been spun? No, there were none!We were so chill, so small and lone.
Have we to higher regions gone?
To give the key Peter was not prone.
I saw the sacramental stone
And laid my hallowed hands thereon.
Alas! the bread and wine were gone.
With dazzling radiance all things shone,
'Twas base deceit; I was undone."
Miss Burns was touched to see that his thoughts were still engaged with the little dancer. On another occasion he said to her:
"I am not fitted to be a physician. I am incapable of making the sacrifice to humanity of pursuing an occupation that depresses me so. I have a riotous imagination. Perhaps I could be a writer. But I am determined to become a sculptor. While I was sick, especially at the end of the second week, I remodelled all the works of Phidias and Michael Angelo. Don't misunderstand me, Eva. In becoming a sculptor, I am no longer ambitious of distinction. I shall merely be rendering homage to the greatness of art. While remaining a faithful workman asking nothing for myself, I may in time succeed in mastering the nude form sufficiently to produce at least one good piece."
"You know I have confidence in your talent," said Miss Burns.
"Then, what do you think of this plan, Miss Eva? The income from my wife's estate is about five thousand marks, enough for the education of my three children. I receive an annuity of three thousand marks. Do you think we five could end our days in peace in a little house with a studio, say, near Florence?"
Miss Burns's answer to the weighty question was a hearty laugh.
She was intimately acquainted with the artistic disposition and so, perhaps, was actually well fitted to educate adult children. She had been the good friend and comrade of two or three great artists in France and England, and had a soothing way of entering into the work, the interests, and the experiences of such extraordinary men. Neither of her parents had been an artist. Her father had been a plain business man. Yet both had possessed that veneration and love of art and artists which is almost as rare as the creative gift. In the museum at Birmingham, there were pictures by Burne-Jones and Rossetti and a collection of drawings, the gift of her father while still a prosperous man. She herself was not convinced that she had an imperative calling to art. Her passion was to be useful to art in serving artists. This was not the first time, and Frederick knew it, that she had acted the part of the good Samaritan. She was always ready to sacrifice herself in order to help artists out of every sort of difficulty.
"I have no desire to be a Bonifacius Ritter," said Frederick. "A great collection of studios, with works turned out by wholesale, no matter how excellent they may be, does not suit my disposition. What I want is a workshop opening on a garden, where I can pick violets in winter and break off branches of evergreen oak, yew, and laurel. There, in peace and quiet, hidden from the world, I should like to devote myself to art and culture in general. The myrtle, too, would have to blossom again within my garden wall, Miss Burns." Miss Burns laughed and paid no attention to the allusion.
She thoroughly approved of his plans from her own healthy point of view.
"There are enough people," she said, "who are born physicians and men of action, and there are far too many entering those careers and jostling one another out of the way."
She spoke of Ritter with sympathy, yet in a tone of superiority, and smiled with benignant understanding upon his naïve penetration into the regions of the Upper Four Hundred.
"Life," she said, "when it is eager to hurry on with a show of vivacity, demands credulity, love of pleasure, ambition. I, myself, before my father lost the greater part of his fortune, got to know high life in England through and through. I found it insipid and boresome."
When Frederick was able to stand alone and walk and go up and down stairs, Miss Burns left for New York to complete the work that she had begun in Ritter's studio, wishing to finish it before the middle of May, when she intended to return to England to straighten out some legal matters in connection with a small inheritance from her mother, who had died two years before. She had already engaged passage on the Auguste Victoria of the Hamburg-American line. Frederick von Kammacher let her go without protest. He did not try to detain her. He profoundly admired the girl who was so strong and stately; and he had conceived of his future existence as a state of lasting companionship with her. There was Dutch and German blood combined with the culture and polish of the Englishwoman. Wherever she settled down, wherever she busied herself, she produced the cosey charm of the English home. She was healthy and, as Frederick had to admit, very beautiful. He did not detect the faintest symptom of the thing he most dreaded, feminine hysteria.
"I should like to have a comrade like her for life," he thought. "I should like her to be the mother of Angèle's children."