it was thus that violet came to know that her mother was dead; but weary days and leaden months went by before she ceased to watch and wait for her; and each morning she only awoke to a fresh surprise, a fresh thrill of pain, a fresh wrestling of spirit against what could never be altered.
while her father was in the room she seemed always able to repress the anguish of her little heart. he was so tender, so pitiful; he tried so earnestly to imitate the loving ways and words of the poor dead mother. but when he went out in the morning to the office for his orders, or to the forest to select wood for his trade, and his daughter was left temporarily under the charge of kate, then it was that all the world seemed going wrong, and that violet's tears flowed almost ceaselessly.
kate had a kind, loving heart, but she had, oh, such hard and sharp bones: and she had not learned[pg 29] by long and watchful practice the easiest way to lift the poor invalid. each day when she raised violet from her bed and placed her in her bath before the stove, there were bitter cries of pain and sobbing cries for "mother." kate, too, was somewhat stupid and clumsy in the matter of dressing her charge. she had long sharp nails, which often scraped her little neck and arms; and the strings of the petticoats so often got into knots, which it took tedious minutes to undo again.
each day when john came home for his dinner at twelve, he found little violet's eyes red with tears, and her usually pale face swelled and blotched with the traces of past grief.
"couldst not thou dress me, father?" she had said once pitifully.
and he had promised to try; but he had not proved much more successful than kate. the buttons of his coat had hurt her, and the strings of the little petticoats were to him an impossibility. he was a great big man, with hands like a giant; and he had a willing loving heart, bigger than his whole body, and yet the knots perplexed him even more than they did kate; and after one trial even violet said with a smile,—
"i am afraid father is not a very good dresser, is he?"
[pg 30]
to which he replied with a laugh,—
"no; i am afraid father is a regular old botch." but she saw as he turned away that there were tears in his eyes.
after this she made no further lamentations over her dressing. it was not that kate improved much, but she felt that the traces of her tears and her heavy eyes pained her father to his very heart. she saw it in his face each day as he entered the room at dinner time. she saw the anxious look of inquiry, and then the smile of relief as their eyes met, when there were no blistered cheeks or heavy eyelids to cause him sorrow.
her father was by trade a wood-carver, or perhaps more strictly speaking a toy-maker. he was wonderfully clever, and could make lovely boxes with carved fruit and flowers on their lids; and he could design and execute panels of cedar and walnut covered with the most delicate traceries; but his chief employment was making toys, jack-in-the-boxes, noah's arks, sheep-folds, wooden soldiers, and wooden cannon, nine-pins, and heaps of other playthings; for the town was famous for its toy-shops, and john worked for one of the largest stores, and was well known to be the most skilful hand at the trade. he had a little workshop on the ground-floor of the house,[pg 31] where he had his lathe and where he kept all his tools, and the wooden boxes also into which, when the toys were finished, he packed them for the foreign market.
in the old days, when the little mother was upstairs, and he knew that his violet was happy, he used to sit in this little den for hours at a time, carving and singing; while the toys which were to fill the hearts of the foreign children with delight grew under his hands in a marvellous way. but now john never sang, and the work he formerly delighted in seemed to have lost its interest. at last he thought he would bring some of his work upstairs and sit of an evening in the window of violet's room. of course all the lathe-work and the coarser wood-carving must be done downstairs, but he could generally find some occupation which would not litter the room above, and which did not require noisy hammering or filing.
violet was enchanted at this new arrangement. she loved to see her father at his work, and to watch the piece of shapeless wood grow gradually under his hand into the form he wished it to assume.
above all, she loved to see him carving the animals for the noah's arks. when he had this work to do he always sat close up beside her in the window; and as he finished each animal he used to place it for her approval on the window-sill, until sometimes all the[pg 32] narrow ledges were covered with elephants and ducks and pigs, apparently walking along in very solemn array.
by-and-by he allowed her to help him in his work. he bought her a little paint-box, and he taught her how to colour some of the animals, the yellow canaries, the doves, and the speckled geese. he made her, too, a little table to fit exactly in front of her chair, very tall, with rails to it in front, on which she could place her feet, so that when she worked she need not lean forward to tire her back. the little birds and foxes and squirrels which she painted were far more beautifully coloured than those ordinarily placed in noah's arks, because the colours she used were much finer than those in common use; so the good john could say with truthful pride to the neighbours who sometimes dropped in of an evening to chat with him and violet,—
violet helps her father
violet helps her father. page 32.
"see what my little daughter can do; see how she helps me at my work. there are no such animals to be seen in all edelsheim." and then violet's pale face would flush with pleasure, and tears, born of happy blushes, would fill her eyes while the neighbours looked admiringly at the yellow weasels and the little red foxes, coloured perhaps a thought too brightly, but still very pretty to look at.
[pg 33]
the toys, too, with which her room was now well stocked were a great attraction to the children of the neighbourhood; and, where guns and drums and swords were to be had for the asking, the little ones of course loved to congregate. there was beginning to be a talk now about a war with france, and the children's ideas took all of a sudden a most warlike turn. they banged the drums and blew the wooden trumpets and slashed at the chairs and tables till the din was horrible, and sometimes violet's head ached, and she wished they would go away. but when they did go away, and the shadows grew long, and john had not returned from the forest, or was busy turning some critical work in his lathe, then she wished they were back again; for when she was alone the old ache always began at her heart, the old cry came again to her lips, "mother, sweetest mother, come back to me."
of all the children who came to sit or play with violet, she loved fritz adler the best. he and his little sister ella were her almost daily visitors. fritz's mother, the baker's wife opposite, always complained that fritz was the "wildest fly" in all the town; and there certainly appeared to be an unusual amount of life about him, but perhaps this was just what made his company so pleasant to her. he always[pg 34] brought into her room a bright face and a hearty laugh, a great rush of free joyousness, which seemed to lift the heart of the sick child out of its languor and make it beat for the time healthily and happily.
besides this, she had trust in fritz. he had never told her a lie, and she relied implicitly on all he said to her. with his curling hair and his bright eyes, his fresh colour and his careless stride, he was the very embryo of a young german soldier, prepared to conquer or to die, and fear had no place in his heart.
a greater contrast than he presented to poor little violet could not be imagined. she was so still, so pale, so passive. her eyes, instead of sparkling, were grave, large, and almost the colour of her violet dress; and since her mother's death fritz was almost the only person who had succeeded in making her laugh outright, and even this had been on very rare occasions.
ella, like her brother, was the very personification of rude health. she had rosy cheeks, curly fair hair which hung over her shoulders, dimpled hands, and great sturdy legs. she was simply fritz's shadow. he exercised the same curious influence over her which he did over violet. when fritz galloped up and down the street, sword in hand, threatening death[pg 35] to every frenchman who ever breathed, ella was sure to be following behind him as fast as her fat legs would allow, imitating his every word and gesture. when fritz fell unexpectedly into the gutter, ella was certain to fall on the top of him; when fritz sat in his little wooden cart drawn by nero, the great black newfoundland, and rushed down the cobbled hill at full speed, ella was invariably beside him, with her fair hair floating out behind her in a yellow halo, and her fat legs propped on the little wooden board in front of her.
if there was one thing more than another that violet longed to be able to do, it was to drive in this cart. when she saw the wooden box flying down the street past the window, with the children seated in it, her heart gave great leaps of excitement, and she leaned almost dangerously forward in her chair to see them reach the foot of the hill. but the coming home was somewhat more tedious. nero was very good at galloping down hill, but exceedingly bad about coming up it again. fritz generally urged him forward on these occasions by stout tugs at his tail and fearful guttural sounds, in which ella joined until her very cheeks grew purple; but nero had evidently not a sensitive tail, and when toiling up the hill he seemed also to grow quite deaf.
[pg 36]
it tired violet to watch them returning; for when she heard fritz's excited adjurations, and saw ella's cheeks blown out like a roasted apple, she felt somehow as if she were drawing the carriage up the hill herself; and her shoulders used to ache so that she had to give up looking out of the window, and lean back in her chair.
violet had a little basket fastened to a cord, which she could let down into the street from her window, and into which the children and the neighbours were in the habit of putting little presents. the baker's wife, fritz's mother, often ran across the street and put in gingerbread cakes, still warm from the oven. the confectioner's boy, too, as he went by with his loaded tray of dainties, had a commission from his master to drop a package of sugar almonds or other sweets into the little wicker-work basket. fritz, also, who was ingenious, had contrived an arrangement by which a little bell could be rung from the street up into her little turret-window whenever there was a gift waiting below for her in the street. but fritz was also exceedingly mischievous; and one day, when he had rung the bell somewhat violently, and violet had let down her small basket, she had found inside when she opened it only a large yellow frog squatting on a vine leaf, which immediately leaped out, first on[pg 37] her purple dress, and then upon the floor, where the cat pounced on it, and violet's screams rang through the house. but fritz had already reached the door, and the frog was carried off in his red pocket-handkerchief, and replaced among the cabbages in the back garden.
after this she always opened her basket cautiously, especially when the bell was rung with unusual violence. and on one occasion, observing the legs of a cockroach issuing from the wicker sides of the basket, she opened the lid with special care, and seeing its contents, she turned the basket upside down, and shook everything quickly into the street beneath. the punishment was complete; for fritz, who was standing directly underneath and gaping upwards, received a perfect shower of cockroaches on his face; and little ella, also, who was smilingly gazing up at the window, had to rush into the shop opposite, to her mother, to have some of the struggling black creatures released from her web of yellow hair.
this was one of the occasions on which violet had really laughed. it would have been impossible not to do so, as the mirth which rose up from the street beneath was infectious to the last degree. fritz's father, standing at his door, and over whose head clouds of steam were issuing from the bakery beyond,[pg 38] laughed at his son's discomfiture till the tears ran down his cheeks; and even the grim policeman walked out into the middle of the street, partly to avoid the black insects which were swarming on the narrow pavement beneath, and partly to catch a sight of little violet's face. he had heard her laugh, and it had sounded like music in his ears; but now, as she glanced out quickly, he walked on again with a steady tread and a face like iron. his sword clanked against the pavement, and the spike on his helmet shone severely bright, and none could guess, as he passed them, that the heart so tightly fastened up within his blue uniform was soft as the baker's dough in the shop beside him, or that his eyes were blinded at this very moment with sudden tears.
there were occasions when even he had placed gifts in the basket;—little toys which other hands had played with; story books which other eyes had feasted on greedily, and on whose pages were the marks of the little fingers which had held them once, so tightly and eagerly grasped; and occasionally a bundle of snowdrops had been dropped in hastily, whose stalks had been rolled in damp moss to keep them fresh till the morning, for he always placed his gifts in the basket at night-time. he rang no bell; no eye saw him. he did not call out to the little figure seated[pg 39] in the window above, with the shaded lamp burning on the table beside her; he asked for no thanks, but passed on with the same official tread, the same clanking sword, and the same ache for ever at his heart.
violet never knew who it was that placed these presents in her basket. she often asked fritz if he could guess; but though he did guess the butcher, the chestnut-seller, and the lamplighter, simply because they had children, he never thought of the grave policeman, who so often, as he walked past, threatened to put him in prison.
violet treasured these gifts more than all her other presents. she felt, by a kind of instinct, that there was some story connected with them. on the fly-leaf of one book she had read with a sudden sting of strongest pain these words,—"for my own sick girlie, from her little mother."
"her little mother!" she had gazed at the crabbed characters till this word seemed to rise up off the page and enter into her very heart; immense tears gathered in her eyes, and fell in stars of bitterness upon the paper,—"for my own sick girlie, from her little mother."
in the evening she had said to fritz in a low voice, almost imploring in its entreaty,—
[pg 40]
"couldst not thou, dear fritz, find out for me who gave me this?"
"i have told thee already," replied fritz, who was busy sharpening a wooden sword on the hard edge of the lowest window-sill. "it is the lamplighter; i am certain of it. whenever he goes by with his ladder and lantern, i remark he is always looking up at this house and at thee; and, besides, his pockets are always bulged out as if he had heaps of things in them."
the reasoning was, no doubt, good; but it did not satisfy violet.
"but has he any children, fritz?" she asked softly and a little doubtfully, for fritz sometimes grew impatient if his words were questioned.
"of course he has—hundreds of them."
"but are any of them sick—sick, i mean, like me?" she pleaded anxiously.
"sick like thee?" he repeated vaguely, for his mind was still engrossed entirely with sharpening the deadly blade which he held in his hand; which he did by moistening it in his mouth and rubbing it on the wood before him, so that the window-sill was now quite black with paint, and so were his lips—"sick like thee? how can i tell? all i know is, he has only one child, and she is the greatest goose in all the[pg 41] town—that fat red-haired girl called minna, who sits under the red umbrella on the steps of the chapel and sells fruit."
violet shook her head and sighed. fritz's description of the lamplighter's daughter did not fit in with her thoughts at all. the little sick maiden reading the book given her by her mother did not resemble in any point fritz's fat girl selling fruit on the chapel steps.
again she sighed heavily, and murmured to herself, half in a whisper, "oh, i wonder!"
"what do you wonder about? what do you want to know? i'll tell you if you don't bother," said fritz quickly.
"i want to know if minna could ever have had a 'little mother.'"
fritz had by this time succeeded in smashing the blade of the sword short off close to the very handle, and was standing up now, looking very red and angry opposite her, with a fearful smudge of paint on his lip and another on his cheek.
"violet!" he cried passionately, "see what thou hast made me do! thou art a little goose thyself." he waved the broken stump of the sword in his hand, and then he stopped.
violet's book had slipped off her knees on to the floor,[pg 42] and fritz, with his natural rough politeness, had stooped to pick it up. as he did so, he saw the written inscription on the fly-leaf. for a full minute he gazed at it; then looking up covertly at her, he saw that she had tears in her eyes.
"violet," he cried remorsefully, with his two stout arms stretched out to embrace and comfort her, "don't cry; it could not be the same girl, for," he added with decision, "minna never had any mother; of that i am quite sure."
