Saxe Holm's Stories, Second Series. Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson

and the unseen world. Yet she never believed that the link was with Karl. It was with the unknown maiden of Ischl; the immortal Love Blossoms seemed to bind it, to symbolize it, and in the tremulous sunlight to utter it. Margaret ​was not superstitious, and she had not a touch of sentimentalism in her nature; but it was out of her power to shake off the influence of this picture. "Königsee" floated through her brain, even in school hours, like the refrain of a song; when she looked off into the sky, the clouds took shapes like the shape of the sides of the Königsee, and whenever she gazed on the blue lake, she found her fancy walling it in with mountains, like those which walled Königsee. By night she dreamed of sailing in shadowy boats, with the shadowy maiden, on Königsee; and she waked from these dreams only to find the sunbeams on her wall lighting up the shadowy maiden's head, and making golden bars across the water of Königsee. The young maiden of Ischl had loved Karl Reutner very much; she loved him still; else, whence came this thrilling personality in the mute picture record of her and of the sunny day when she and her lover had sailed on Königsee! Had Karl gone to her? Had her love drawn and lifted him up, past the stars, and over the golden wall of Heaven? Were they together now?

      Constantly Margaret asked herself these questions, and constantly one answer came. "No! Karl is alive." Ah, well must the shadowy maiden of Ischl have loved Karl! Well does she love him still. Else, how does she always and ever, through the mute picture record of that summer day on Königsee, say to Margaret, "Karl is not dead! Karl will come home?"

      ​Six months had passed. Karl's name was oftener spoken now in his home. Wilhelm could bear the sound. The faithful little children still called their geraniums and fuchsias and roses "Uncle Karl's flowers," and laid the fairest buds and blossoms by the "teacher's" plate at breakfast. Margaret was as thoroughly at home in the family as she could have been in her own father's house, and yet there was a shade of reverential deference in Wilhelm's and Annette's manner towards her, and in their regard for her. They loved her as a sister, but it was as they would love a sister who had become a princess. To their simple and unlearned souls her acquirements seemed greater than they really were, and a certain unconscious reticence of nature which Margaret had, in spite of all her overflowing enthusiasm and frankness, surrounded her with a barrier of personal dignity which every one felt, and which no one ventured to disregard.

      On New Year's night Margaret returned home late from a party. As she drew near the house she saw to her surprise a bright light burning in the sitting-room. Fearing that some one was ill, she opened the door of the room quickly; a strange sight met her eyes. Wilhelm was on his knees, his face uplifted, and tears streaming down his cheeks. Annette stood opposite him, with her hands clasped, looking at him with an expression ​of unspeakable rapture. Neither of them spoke as Margaret approached.

      "Oh, what is it? What has happened?" exclaimed Margaret, too terrified by their strange attitudes to see that their expression was one of great joy, and not of grief.

      Wilhelm stretched one hand towards the table, and his lips moved, but no sound came from them. Annette turned to the table, took up a letter, and gave it to Margaret, saying, "Karl! Karl! He is alive. He comes home."

      Margaret sank into a chair. Strong as her instinct had been that Karl was not dead, the certainty came to her with almost as great a shock of surprise as it had come to his brother and sister.

      The letter was from Karl's friend, the young lady in the Philadelphia Hospital. It was long and full, giving an account of all that Karl had suffered in the months in Libby Prison, of his almost miraculous preservation at City Point, and of his present convalescence. At the close she said:—

      "The surgeon says that if Karl has no drawbacks he will be well enough to come home in a month. He most earnestly advises that you do not come here. Karl is absolutely comfortable, and wants for nothing; the excitement of talking would do him great harm. He himself begs that you will not come. I will see him every day, and write to you every week."

      ​At the bottom of the sheet Karl had written:—

      "Beloveds, do not come to me. I will the sooner come to you. God be praised.

      "Karl."

      Grief has no tears like joy. A stranger would have supposed for the next few days that the whole household was in sorrow. Everybody's face was red with weeping. Nobody could speak in a steady voice. Wilhelm sat silent, by the hour, looking into the fire, and wiping his eyes.

      "Oh, Miss Margaret," he said; "Oh teacher, taught of some angel, why did I not believe you? Why is it that you, who have not known our Karl, should be the one to be told, and not I?"

      Margaret was on the point of telling him that the maiden of Ischl had told her because she found her sleeping in Karl's room. But a vague shame sealed her lips. She need not have hesitated. It would not have seemed a strange or an incredible thing to Wilhelm Reutner.

      The next letters were not so cheering. The excitement of hearing, even by letter, from his friends, had caused a slight relapse of Karl's fever, and the physician now thought that it might be six weeks before he could safely travel. It was a hard thing for Wilhelm to sit quietly at home and wait for so many days. Only Margaret's influence withheld him from going to Philadelphia at once.

      "I need not to see him," he said; "I could go each day to the door and ask if he is better. No hurt ​could be to him in that; it would not be so hard for me as is this to stay here; and the doctors do not always know the right; no one can do for my Karl so as I can do."

      "But, Mr. Reutner," urged Margaret, "you do not dream how much harder it would be for you to bear not seeing him, there; it is almost more than you can bear here, three days' journey from him; if he were in the next room, nobody could keep you out; and then if he were to have another fever from the excitement of seeing you, you would never forgive yourself; and it might kill him. He must be very weak."

      This last fear restrained Wilhelm. "Yes, if it were to hurt him. That would not be love!" he said over and over to himself, and tried to keep his heart and hands busy in making preparations for Karl's comfort after his return; but the days seemed longer and longer to him, and his face again grew worn and haggard, almost as much as it had in the first few weeks after the news of Karl's death.

      One night he sprang up from the tea-table, saying, "Annette, come to the theatre! I cannot sit in this room, thinking how it will be when Karl is again in his corner with the violin. I wish we could live in another house till he is here. It will never be done, these two months!"

      After they had gone, Margaret drew her chair in front of the fire, and fell into a long reverie, a ​strange thing for her to do. She reviewed her whole life; first as the eldest daughter in the poor minister's household; then as the unknown teacher in the great city; now the successfull instructress, highly esteemed, sought after by people of culture conscious of influence and power, having in a great measure realized her early dreams. But the early dreams had been succeeded by later ones no less vivid, no less alluring. Margaret Warren had in her nature a vein of intense ambition. It was not a vulgar craving for power as power; it was rather that a consciousness of power craved room, craved action. Her studies, her reading, had opened to her new worlds, and made life seem to her more and more a vista upon which she had as yet barely entered.

      Her æsthetic sense was fast developing into a passion which must have food; beauty in little things, beauty in great things, beauty perpetually she was learning to demand. A verse of Keats could so stimulate her, so lift her into delight, that she would find jarring and offense in things which her practical good sense told her were as true, as harmonious in their way as the color and rhythm of Keats's peerless lines. She recalled herself constantly; she reproached herself constantly; she said sternly to herself many a time, "Dignity and truth are the same in all ages. This Wilhelm here is great; and Annette, and the children, they are representative. Socrates knew no more than ​they live, each year, each hour, in their simplicity. If I dwelt in a court, the king could be, after all, only a man. All knowledge is open to me, I have but to take it. What do I want?" But that she did want Margaret knew very well. She wanted the delights of the companionship of the very wisest and highest men, the delight of the sight and sound and sense of utmost beauty, and still more, the delight of feeling in herself the wisdom, the beauty, the elevation. It was partly a noble,