17. XVII.
“Rodolph, dear Rodolph!” said Bertha one
day to her husband, standing at the castle entrance,
and looking forth upon the retreating
figure of Conrade Weickhoff, who had just left
them; “there is something about the baron Weickhoff
that is very annoying to me. I do not like
him, Rodolph.”
“He is my friend, Bertha,” responded Rodolph,
with a gravity that seemed to rebuke her no less
than his language.
“I know it, dear Rodolph, and I try to like
him, because he is your friend; but forgive me,
dear Rodolph, when I tell you that all my efforts
are in vain. I cannot like him; I do not feel at
ease in his presence.”
The youth looked curiously upon the blooming
and blushing woman of his heart, and, strange to
say, he loved her the more because she could not
tolerate his friend. He dared not speak out his
feelings and thoughts, however, for there was between
the two a manifest contradiction which he
had sought, but vainly, to reconcile. In his own
estimation, Conrade had ever been his friend. In
boyhood they were inseparable, and, certainly,
the very possession of his wife and present happiness
was owing entirely to Conrade. Should
he oppose to these substantial services the capriciousness
of taste which found fault with a look, a
glance, or a ridiculous chuckle? Nothing could
be more idle or unjust in the eye of reason and
good sense; yet, in his heart, that glance and
chuckle were more than enough to counterbalance
all the substantial services which his friend had
rendered him.
“And what is there, dear Bertha, in Conrade
Weickhoff that displeases you?”
“He is so cold,” said she, innocently.
“Indeed!” exclaimed the other, not altogether
so well pleased with his wife, and rather more
pleased with his friend. “Indeed — cold — in
what manner, Bertha?”
“He seems to have lost all human sensibilities,”
was her reply. “When he speaks, it is only to
sneer at his neighbors. Does he hear of any virtues
which they possess, he is sure to know and to
speak of their defects and foibles. He laughs,
too, at sacred things — at age and character —
and does not seem to relish the respect which
others show to them. Then that strange, horrid
laugh, which he has; and sometimes, when you
turn suddenly, you catch his eye fixed upon you
with a staring sort of contempt, which puts me,
for all the world, in mind of the Mephistopheles
whom you remember to have seen upon the tapestry
in the old hall at Staremberg, where he tempts
our ancestor, the Teuton, on the brow of the Harz.
He sometimes frightens me to look at him, and
my blood is chilled when he speaks to me, or
laughs. I cannot like him, I'm afraid.”
“Nor I,” thought Rodolph, but he did not say
it. The words of Bertha saddened him more than
ever, though he loved her the more when he found
how large was the degree of sympathy between
them. A common aversion is not unfrequently
the occasion of a common love.
