CHAPTER VI.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 72, 18 October 1884, Page 4

CHAPTER VI.

Frieda breathed freely, as if relieved from a burden, and returned to the drawingroom. Here, however, she was received by Gustav, who had remained in the back ground in apparent indifference, but not a word of the conversation had been lost on him. " Listen to me, Frieda. lam not at all pleased with you," he began in an admonishing tone. " What did you come here for ? Why do you get out of my brother's way on every occasion, fairly run away from him ? You make no effort to approach him, you let the unusual mood he is now in slip by, and take no advantage of it, but remain obstinately silent when he talks to you. I have shown you the way, but it is now time for you to take steps on your own account." Frieda listened to this scolding in silence, but now she drew herself up, and said* shortly and angrily : " I cannot !" 44 What can you not do ?" "Keep the promise I gave you. You know I did it half under compulsion. I followed you here against my will ; I took up this part that you have given me in opposition to myself. But I cannot carry it on, it is beyond my power. Let me go home ; there is nothing to be gained here." "Just so," said Gustav, angrily. "A nice game that is. So it wa.s for this I crossed the ocean with you, quarrelling outright with my publisher and editor, who did not wish to give me leave. Here I sit patiently at an office desk and bear Miss Clifford's sovereign contempt, acting like a brainless loafer, to the end that Miss Frieda may tell me ' I cannot do it any more.' But it will not do. You cannot throw it all over in a week ; I insist on it. You will remain here, and carry out what we have begun." The girl's dark eyes were raised sadly and gravely to the speaker. There was something of reproach in them at the light manner in which he hads poken. "Do not think me ungrateful. I know how much I owe you, all that you have done for me, but I did pot think the task was so bard. I cannot force my heart to like this cold, hard man, and he will never like me, of that I feel convinced. If I had only seen one single ray of warmer feeling in his eyes, or heard one heartfelt word from his lips, I would have tried to approach him, but this stiff coldness of demeanour that never thaws, and nothing breaks through, chills me back again." Instead of answering, Gustav took her hand and drew her down beside him on the eofa. " Did I tell you the task would be easy ?" he asked. "It is difficult — more difficult than I thought ; but it is not impossible. With these shy retiring ways you will do nothing. You must face the enemy. He has entrenched himself strongly ; you will have to storm the position." "I cannot," exclaimed Frieda passionately. "I tell you, nothing in him appeals to ray feelings, and if there is no love to give or receive, what can Ido here ? Try for a home, a fortune ? You do not mean it, and if you did I should reject them both if they were offered me with such heartless indifference as that with which he offered me the shelter of his house." She had risen at these last words, but Gustav drew her down again. " There you are, raging again, and flying out, always ending in an obstinate refusal. If I did not know from whom you had this obstinacy, this passionate nature under outward reserve, I should read you another lesson. But it is an hereditary failing, against which there is no use struggling. " The young girl clasped his right hand in both hers as if in entreaty. " Let me go, let me go home, please do ? What does it matter if I am poor? you will not desert me, and lam young — I can work. Thousands are as badly off as I, and must take up the battle of life. I would much rather do it than beg for the recognition that is denied me here. I only submitted to your wishes when you brought me to your brother. I do not want either him or his wealth. "But he wants you," said Gustav with grave emphasis. "He needs your love more than you think." A bitter smile rose to the girl's lips. " You are wrong. I know little enough of the world and of men, but I know enough to feel that Mr Sandow neither needs love nor wishes for it. He loves nothing in the world, not even Jessie, who has grown up almost like a daughter under his eyes, not even you, his only brother. I have seen well enough how he keeps >ou both at a distance. He thinks of nothing but the pleasures of gain, and yet he is rich enough. Is it true, really true, that he is connected with Jenkins, that a man with such a reputation is his friend ?" "Child, you do not understand," said Gustav gently. "A manlike my brother, all whose hopes in life were shattered, all his happiness turned to misery, every blessing to a curse, is either ruined completely by the blow, or else it changes his whole character and bxistence. I know what he was twelve years ago, and what lived in him then cannot be quite dead. You may reawaken it — that is why I brought you here, you must at least try." These words, so gravely spoken, did not fail to affect Frieda, but she shook her head slightly. "lam a stranger to him, and I ahall remain so. You forbade me yourself to tell him of our relationship." "Certainly I did ; if he found out the truth now, he would probably eject you sternly, and an obstinate creature like you would not stay a minute longer, and then everything would be lost. But you should at least approach him. You have hardly Bpoken to each other yet. You say you have no feeling for him. But it must grow up in you, and in him too, and it will, when you have learnt to look at each other face to face." " I will try," said Frieda, with a deep sigh ; " but if nothing comes of it, if I only meet with harshness and mistrust " "Then you will think 'This man has been much sinned against,' " interrupted Gustav. "So much that he has a right to be suspicious and distrustful where others would open their arms and love. You, indeed, are innocent; you suffer for another's sin, but it falls with its full weight on you." The girl did not answer, but two hot tears fell from her eyes, while she laid her head on the speaker's shoulder. He stroked her brow softly. "Poor child ! It is hard at your age, when all should be joy and sunshine, to have to do with hatred and mistrust and all the miseries ef human life. It was difficult enough for me to reveal it all to you, but it made such a difference in your life that you must necessarily know it, Apd my

Frieda does not belong to the weak tremblers. She has some of the energy, and I am afraid, too, of the hardness, of a certain other oharaoter. So bravely forwards; wo shall suoceed yet," ' Frieda dried her tears and tried to smile. " You are right. lam so ungrateful and obstinate to you, who have done so much for me, You are " "The best and noblest of men," interrupted Gustav. "Of course I am, and I feel deeply injured that Miss Clifford will not see it, though you assured her I wasso pathetically. But now go out of doors for a few minutes. You look quite feverish with crying, and you must get rid of those tear-marks. I will wait here for Jessie. We have not quarrelled yet to-day, and it has become quite a necessity of life to me." Frieda obeyed, and left the drawingroom for the garden by way of the verandah. She walked slowly through the park- like grounds which stretched to the shore, and on which the gardener had spent his utmost skill ; but the spot she was looking for was in the prettiest part of the garden. It was a simple bench shaded by two trees, with a view of the sea, and had been the favourite place of the young stranger from the first day she came. The fresh sea-breoze cooled Frieda's flushed cheeks, and dried her tears, but the shadow on her brow was not so easily dispersed. The shadow grew deeper and j deeper as she sat lost in thought, dreamily watching the waves as tbey rolled in and broke on the sand. The garden was not so secluded as it appeared. Voices were heard not far off. By the iron gate that closed the grounds of the villa, Sandow stood discussing the new arrangements of the last few days with the gardener. The gardener was exhibiting his work with evident pride, and it was decidedly tastefully carried out ; b"* +ka master of the house seemed to take little interest in it. He looked it all over cursorily, and made his approval understood in a few cold words, then turned towards the house. In going thither he passed the bench on which Frieda sat. " Here, Miss Palm ? You have chosen the farthest and most secluded place in the whole garden." " And the most beautiful. The view over the sea is glorious." " That is a matter of taste," said Sandow. "For me this everlasting flow and ebb is deadly monotonous. I could not stand it for long," He had just stopped to speak in passing, and now prepared to go on. Frieda would probably have left his remark unanswered, and ended the conversation, but Gustav's warning had taken effect. The young girl did not sink into shy silence as before, but replied in a tone of deep omotion which forced attention : "I do so love the sea, and even if you laugh at me, Mr Sandow, I cannot forget that beyond those waves lies my home." Sandow did not seem in a mood for jesting. He stood still, his eyes involuntarily following the direction of hers, then returning to examine Frieda's face carefully, as if he was looking for something there. It was a dull afternoon. Clouds were heavy with rain, and the usually unbounded blue distance of the sea was to-day veiled and narrowed in. Hardly a hundred yards was to be seen : the rest was covered with thick fog, and the restless waves, illumined by no ray of sunlight, lay in deep mysterious shadow. The breakers rolled in, and broke in white foam with a whispering flash of sound on the sand of the shore. Far out in the fog was heard the roar of the great sea, and two seagulls came with long swooping flight over the waves, then disappeared in the mist. Frieda's eyes followed them dreamily, and she started when Sandow suddenly broke the silence with the question, " What was the name of the pastor with whom you lived in New York ?" "Pastor Hagen." "It was there you heard that report about Jenkins & Co. ?" "Yes, Mr Sandow." Frieda seemed about to add something more, but the harshness of the last question closed her lips. " I might have known it. These clergymen, with their extravagant ideas of morality, are always very ready with this condemnation when anything does not fall in with their own ideas. It is easy to look down on this sinful world from the pulpit, while we must all live in it. These gentlemen should come down sometimes, and try this life where each one has to fight for the upper hand ; they would soon repent of their hypocritical, calm, and immaculate Christianity ; but they would learn at any rate to judge charitably of things they absolutely do not understand." The sneering sarcasm of these words would probably have deterred anyone else. But Frieda protested vigorously. " Pastor Hagen is gentleness and charity personified," she exclaimed with fiery indignation. "He would never condemn anyone unjustly. It was the first and only time I ever heard him express a hard judgment, and I know it was anxiety about his countrymen that made him do it." " Does that prove he was right?" said Sandow sharply, coining a step nearer. "I do not know ; it is all new to me. But, Mr Sandow, you are connected with this man : you must know " She dare not finish, for she felt that a word more might be taken as an insult, and Sandow seemed inclined to accept it as such. The gentler tone in which he began the conversation again returned to its usual cold expression, as he answered : " At any rate I am extremely annoyed to hear the name of a great firm slandered in such circles. You are still almost a child, Miss Palm, and probably understand nothing of such things. You cannot know what influence the name of Jenkins has in the commercial world. But those who make themselves the mouthpiece of such reports should consider it, and take care." The justification sounded fluent enough, but not convincing. No one had denied the power and influence of this man— only asserted the bad use he put them to. Frieda had naturally no idea what the nature of his connection with the firm of Clifford was, but the juxtaposition of the two names was enough to alarm her. " You are angry with me for thoughtless words about your business friend," she said in a low voice. ' ' I only repeated innocently what I had heard, and Pastor Hagens speech only referred to the danger to our compatriots which lay in these undertakings. He had it daily before his eyes in New York, and saw how it affected the wellbeing of thousands You can hardly know that the interests of your bank must be so far removed from such speculations as that," "And how do you know that?" asked Sandow with a somewhat forced laugh. The conversation began to touch him too nearly, but he made no effort to break it off; there was something in it that attracted him against his will. Frieda had come more and more out of her reserve. The subject was of near and immediate in:ereBt to her, and her voice trembled with emotion, as she answered : "I have only once seen anything of the misery of it, but it made an indelible impression on me. While I was in New York, a number of emigrants, Germans, who ha.d

gone out to the Far Weßt some years before, returned. They had too carelessly reposed full confidence in the representations of some unprincipled agent, and had lost their all in those forests, the greater part of their number had sucoumbed to the olimate, they had lost their property, their hope, and oourage, everything ! The German pastor, who had warned them, and whom they had disregarded, now had to give them advice and help to return to their native land, It was terrible to see these people, once so strong and brave, now broken and despairing, and to hear their lamentations. I shall never forget it." She covered her eyes with her hand as if overcome by the remembranoe. Sandow did not answer a word. Ho hud turned away, and was gazing out into the fog. Motionless, as if under a spell, ho listened to every word, and they became warmer and more passionate as they fell from the young speaker's lips. " I saw on the steamer I came on, which brought many hundreds of emigrants over, how much care and anxiety such a ship carries, how much longing and hope. It is hardly ever good fortune that drives thorn to turn their backs on home. For many it is a forlorn hope, a last effort to save themselves in a new life. And then to think that all these hopes are shattered, that all the painful struggle and work of the poor creatures is of no avail, that they must go down, because, forsooth, one man wishes to be richer, because there are men who will purposely and knowingly send their brethren to certain misery, that they may gain something thereby. I should not have thought it possible had I not seen it myself and heard those who returned." She stopped, shocked at the deathly pallor of the motionless man beside her. He was as stern and immovable as ever, and betrayed no emotion, but all the blood seemod to have loft his face, which had something strange in its fixed expression. He did not notico the questioning, anxious look of the young girl ; her sudden silence recalled him to himself. \Vich a movement of assent he straightened himself and passed his hand over her forehead. " You are a brave advocate for your compatriots, I must allow," he said, but his voice sounded stifled, as if every word cost him an effort. "So would you be if you had the occasion," replied Frieda with perfect freedom. II You would employ the whole force of your namo and position against such undertakings, and you could do so much more than an unknown clergyman, the arduous nature of whose office leaves him no time, and who has to alleviate so much necessity and suffering in his own congregation. Mr Sandow," — and she went a step nearer to him with sudden confidence, "I did not mean to vex you with that careless speech. Report ascribes such schemes to this man. It is quite possible that it was wrong, and that Pastor Hagen was mistaken. You do not believe it ; I see that by your emotion, though you try to hide it, and you must know your buMne?s friend best." Ho was much moved, this man whose hand grasped the back of the garden seat so convulsively, as if the woodwork would break^ under his fingers, so much moved that it was some seconds before he could command voice enough to reply, " We have chanced on a very unprofitable subject!" he said irritably. "But I never thought the quiet shy child, who had hardly raised her eyes or opened her lips during the week she had been in my house, could flame out so passionately when it came to taking the part of others. Why have you never shown us this side before ?" "I dare not, I was afraid " Frieda said no more, but her eyes, raised to his half -frightened half-confident, said what her lips did not, and were as well understood. " Of whom were you afraid ? Of me ?" " Yes," said the young girl sighing heavily. " I was very much afraid of you -till now." "But you must not be so again, child," and in Sandow's voice there was a tone it had not had for years, something of tenderness and warmth. "I may have seemed stern and cold to you, perhaps lam so in my business, but to a young guest who claims hospitality and shelter in my house I should never be so. Do not shrink from me so shyly in future as you have done before. You can come to me without being afraid." He held out his hand, but Frieda hesitated to take it. Red and white alternated in her cheeks in quick succession ; she seemed to be forcibly suppressing some passionate burst of feeling. Just then Jessie's voice was heard calling from the verandah ; she was anxious about the young girl remaining out so late. Frieda turned to go " Miss Clifford is calling me— l must go to her. Thank you, Mr Sandow ; I will nover be afraid of you again." And with a swift movement, before he could prevent her, she had pressed her lips to the outstretched hand, and flown through the bushes. Surprised and touched, Mr Sandow looked after her. What a strange girl ! What could this sudden change from shyness to confidence, and this passionaie outburst after such reserve, mean ? She was and remained a riddle to him, but by her ingenuous and uncompromising behaviour Frioda had succeeded in doing what the most prudent calculation could not have accomplished: she had awakened and secured the interest of this man, who was usually so indifferent to everyone. He had every reason to be angry and annoyed at the girl's fantastic and exaggerated ideas, yet amid all his annoyance was mingled the same feeling that had come over him when he first looked into those dark eyes, and he could not make out whether it was a feeling of pleasure or of pain. He forgot, for perhaps the first time in his life, that his study and his desk laden with important correspondence awaited him. He sat for a long time on the seat gazing out over the restless sea. " Deadly t monotonous," he had called this everlasting ebb and flow. The sense of natural beauty,|like so much else, had long been dead in him, but the words of the recent conversation hovered half unconsciously in his memory. Yes, that was the ocean, and on the other side lay home. Sandow had not thought what was his home for years. He had been a stranger to it for so long, all the roots of his daily life were in this land, and he owed all that he had become to it. The past lay as far away from him as those unseen shores of home away beyond the mist. The rich, proud merchant whose name rang in all exchanges of the world, and who was now accustomed to reckon with hundreds of thousands, looked with pitying contempt on the narrow life of a subordinate official in a small German provincial town. How small and confined the horizon of that life had been, how carefully he had made both ends meet on his small salary, till after long hoping and struggling he had attained a situation which had enabled him to set up housekeeping on a modest scale. Yet how this narrow, poverty-stricken existence had been illuminated by the sunshine of love and happiness. A young and beautiful wife, a blooming child, the present full of sunshine, the future full of dreams and hopes, more had not been wanting to insure the happiness of this man who was then so happy in himself, but a fearful end was put to his happiness. An old comrade of Sandow's, a man who had grown up with him from boyhood^ and

shared his university career, returned, after a long absence, to his native place. He was rioh and independent, and had no need to trouble himself about the oares of life like the friend who received him with open arms, and introduced him into his newly founded home. Therewith began a domestio tragedy such as is often played in secrecy, till some unforeseen accident brings the whole to light. The deceived husband had no suspicion that his wife's heart had been alienated from him, and that there was treachery in his home. Hislove and firm confidence in her made him blind, and when his eyes were at last opened, it was too late, his happiness and honour lay shattered at his feet. In the madness of despair he lost both consciousness and self-control, and struck the robber of his happiness to the ground. Chance spared him the last and worst blow, the sin of murder ; the injured man recovered slowly, but Sandow had to expiate the deed by several years' imprisonment. However much right had been on his side, the letter of the law condemned him ; the judgment ruined his whole life. His situation was of course lost, his official career closed to him. She, who had once been his wife, had meanwhile, after the divorce proceedings were over, given her hand to the man for whom she had betrayed her husband, and now bore his name. The only thing that remained to the deserted man, or which the law assigned to him, was his child, and her he rejected. He had learnt to distrust everything, to look upon everything he had once regarded as pure and true as a lie ; thus he no longer believed in his fatherhond, and refused to rocognise the little creature who had once made the whole felicity of his life. He sent her to the mother, without even once seeing her again. There was no use thinking of returning to his native place under such circumstances. America only remained open to him, the refuge of so many broken careers. At war with himself and the world alike, poor, and marked with the brand of a prisoner, he cume there, and found the turning point of his life. Here he rose from the depths of misery to wealth and splendour. Since then fortune had been true to Frank Sandow. Whatever he ventured on succeeded, and he too soon found distraction in venturing. He dragged the quieter and more reflective Clifford with him into the vortex: of the boldest and most hazardous speculations, and since his death he hold the reins in his own hands and knew no bounds. There was something unnatural in this man's ever restless pursuit of gain, for he had now no one belonging to him who could succeed to his wealth. But a man must have something to cling to, some aim and object in life, and if better possessions are lost, too often the demon of wealth takes up his abode in the empty space. Thus it had been with Sandow. The demon spurred him ever on to fresh acquisitions, drove him from one unwarrantable speculation to another, and often led him to lay his all on a single card ; but made him at the same time regardless of the joys of life, of rest, or of recreation. The head of the great American banking firm had indeed attained an enviable position, but his face only showed the crowsfeet of caro, the traces of ever-present feverish excitement. Of peace and happiness there were no signs. The fog had become thicker over the sea, and had spread farther. It had advanced like a vague shadow towards the land, and out of it rolled and tumbled the darkened waves. The wind, now risen to its full strength, drove them with more and more force on to tho beach. They no longer followed each other with a light ripple, but broke foaming and roaring on the sand. They rolled warningly up to the feet of the lonely man, who gazed at them absently as if lost to all consciousness of outward things. It seemed to him as if every wave repeated the words he had heard on that ppot, and that the pictures they called up were figured in the mist. Strange it was ! What the vigorous remonstrances of Gustav had not been able to effect was done by this "childish nonsense." The earnest warnings of his brother had made no impression on this merchant, who despised them as "sentimental consideration," rejected them as the ideas of a newcomer, and at last refused to listen to them at all. He was no longer in the habit of weighing his undertakings by the weal or woe they brought to others. "Men must be dealt with as we deal with figures !" That had become the underlying principle of his lite, and the foundation of his wealth. In this speculation recommended by his friend, as in others, he had calculated his figures, and found they would bring him rich profits ; that the lives of men entered into it had not come under his notice. And now an inexperienced child, who had no idea of the present import of her words, had dared to tell him so ! Her words worked and whirled in his mind, he could not get rid of them. " How much care and anxiety such a ship carries, how much hope and longing !" Sandow, too, had known that he, too, had landed here with the hopes of a lifetime shattered, with a final despairing effort to save himself in a new life. He had been fortunate, friends and relations had reached out a helping hand to him. Without them he, too, might have gone down. But hundreds of ships came, and the thousands they carried, perhaps ventured their all as \* ell as he, looked with fear and trembling for a saving hand to be stretched out to them also. There was much, too, to be won in that new land, and to many it might prove more rich in blessing than their old home. But whoever grasped the hand held out by Jenkins and nis partners went surely to his ruin. And there was room for so many on those plains, where fever and ague awaited them. An enormous stretch of land had been bought at a nominal price, and must be peopled at any cost, that the enormous profits might be won. Are there really men who will knowingly send their brethern to certain misery that they may enrich themselves 1 Sandow suddenly sprang up. He would try and free himself from these words which seemed to be branded on his memory, from these thoughts which haunted him like spectres. He could not stand this monotonous roar any longer, and the fog oppressed his breathing. It drove him from the shore into thehouse. Butitwasinvainthathe shut himself into his study, and busied himself in letters and messages. Outside tossed and roared the sea, and inside something else tossed and struggled, something that for years had lain asleep, and now at last awoke — his conscience.