CHAPTER I

Marie sat staring at the thin, hard-featured man opposite her. His eyes, through the great bone spectacles, were magnified till they looked like some gigantic insect's, and his nervous hands shuffled among the papers on the table before him.

"I'm sorry, Miss Helmar," he said, "very sorry, but that is all there is. Your father was a man who indulged his hobbies, and you must admit that a hobby which carries one into every country on the globe is rather expensive."

Across the girl's mind came the image of her father, whom she had followed weeping to the cemetery only yesterday. His tall, thin figure, with its haggard, pain-racked face, was clearly before her mental vision.

When her mother, who was now only a shadowy remembrance, had faded out of her life, Marie had been taken to the convent and left with the nuns. Her childhood had been passed in even, colorless days, in which the monotony had only been broken when she had been called into the library once a week to hear the letter from her father, who was wandering in far countries, which, for her, meant only the colored maps in her geography books.

It seemed little longer than yesterday, when the Mother Superior had sent for her that last time. She could almost hear the gentle voice now.

"Your father is coming home to Vienna, Marie. He writes he has had his solicitor take a house for him on the _Blumen Strasse_. You are to leave us, dear child, and make a home for him."

This wonderful father of whom she had been dreaming, was going to take her with him to a home of their own! She had wanted so to belong to some one. The holiday time had always meant heartaches for her. She could remember how wistfully she had stood with her small face pressed against the convent windows, watching her schoolmates as they left to spend those days at home. She remembered how bare and empty the convent had looked after they were gone, and she had been left to wander about alone, till the school days should begin again. The small, hard pillow on her narrow bed, would be soaked with tears as she read and re-read the small packet of letters from her father, that told her so little. These quiet years, while they had succeeded in suppressing her natural affection, had only stored it away as it were, and the girl was pathetically eager to pour it out to the father whom she scarcely knew.

The wonder and interest of those first few months, woke in her mind ideals and dreams she had never had in the seclusion of the convent, where her day had been bounded by prayers in the morning and the vesper bell at night.

Professor Helmar's life had been wrapped up in his pretty wife. She had been much younger than the reticent, rather shy man, whose interests were all centered in the dry dust of forgotten ages, until the living sunshine of her own hair had flashed across his gray vista. There had been six joyous, wonderful years, and then suddenly she had gone, leaving the place she had filled, empty indeed. Her short illness and death had been a blow so severe to him, that he hesitated only long enough to put their little daughter, whose golden hair reminded him too forcibly of his loss, in the care of the nuns, then threw himself once more into his researches among the ruins of antiquity.

That was twelve years ago, and weary at last, longing for the companionship of the daughter who was the symbol of the love that had meant so much to him, he had come back. And in this short year, Marie, wide-eyed and passionately eager to be all that this wonderful father wanted her to be, had blossomed from the shy convent child into the promise of charming young womanhood.

The little house in the _Blumen Strasse_ was filled with his books, and the pictures her mother had loved. The girl, inspired by her father, came to know and understand art, for Professor Helmar's quest after the evolution of beauty, had carried him through the ages, from its shadowy beginning among the great temples of Egypt, to its culmination in the Greece of Pericles. Then, like a bolt out of the blue, had come his last illness and death, and now she was alone.

Something of all this flashed across her mind in the few seconds the solicitor waited for his answer, much as a man's life passes before him when he is drowning. She looked about her helplessly.

"But," she scarcely recognized her own voice, "what am I to do?"

"That, my dear young lady," this time the solicitor looked over the great spectacles, "is something you will have to decide for yourself. Your father gave you a very good education, I believe."

"I was at the Sacred Heart Convent from the time I was six until just about a year ago. They taught me French and music, and a little drawing. I never thought I should have to use them." Indeed, the idea that the necessities of life were not one's by right, had never entered her mind.

The solicitor was beginning to gather up the papers.

"We never know, my dear young lady, when we will be overtaken by adversity. It is always well to have something to fall back upon. Couldn't you teach--er--say French? Music?"

Marie's tear-filled eyes wandered about the tasteful room. With what happiness she had come here, and after so brief a space of time, this overwhelmingly crushing blow. All her brief life, sheltered as it had been in the convent, her mind had never dwelt upon the nature of material things. There had always been new, clean frocks for her. There had always been sufficient food to eat without the thought of how it had been provided, always the haven of her scrupulously clean, little white room. These things all were, there was no thought in her mind of how they came to be, nor the possibility that they would ever cease to exist.

But now, the meaning of the shriveled old solicitor's words were making themselves plain to her. The means of a livelihood had been taken away. She must, in order to live, provide for herself, either through some physical exertion, or some mental effort. What was she to do?

She had never learned to walk alone. The quiet cloisters, the sweet-faced nuns, had been a prop on which she had leaned. When her father had returned from those journeys into foreign lands, where his discoveries and scientific studies had furnished dreams for her lonely childhood, she had leaned as heavily on him, and now that this support had been taken away, she stood like one swaying dizzily on the edge of a precipice.

It was so short a time ago, only a year, that he had returned, but how different from the strong, stalwart, handsome man she had been expecting.

Again his face seemed to float before her, pale, thin, drawn with suffering, with its sad eyes always seeming to ask for something. Her poor father! The love and companionship she had dreamed of had been too long deferred, and he had gone away on that last great journey, only to leave her worse than alone in the end.

"I suppose you will not want to keep up this place," the solicitor's voice broke in on her thoughts, "it will be quite beyond your affording."

She looked about her at the things she had learned to love. After the bare convent walls, the simple beauty of this little home, had seemed luxury itself. The really fine etchings which had been her mother's, the delicate little Tanagra figurines her father had brought her, the bits of Pompeiian glass flashing back the prismatic colors of the tears that must once have filled them, the little bronze Narcissus, which she had loved above everything, must she give them all up?

Through the long windows she caught a glimpse of the tiny garden where her father and she had always had their coffee. The old locust tree was even now dropping its fragrant white petals on the flagging. He had loved the scent of these white blossoms! How could she leave it all?

"Where shall I go? Where can I go?" She was frightened; the world seemed such a vast, unexplored place to her who had known only the convent and these sheltered walls.

The papers were all gathered together now, and the hands of the solicitor were busy putting them carefully into his black leather portfolio.

"You have about two thousand crowns, Miss Helmar," he told her, "to be exact, I should say, that after all expenses are paid, there will be about one hundred crowns a month for you, for a year. That is not a munificent sum, but it will maintain you until you begin to earn your living."

Marie looked helplessly about her. Her knowledge of money was not very extensive, but she knew that one hundred crowns a month would not even begin to pay the rent of this little nest her father had brought her to. And there was the housekeeper to be paid, food to be bought, clothes. She sighed.

"Where shall I go to live?" she faltered.

"You will find many places, many places," reassured the solicitor, "I dare say I may be able to find you--er--one or two pupils--er--if you are not exorbitant in your prices."

"Oh, no, I'll not be," she answered him eagerly. "I'll ask the least possible, Herr Gutman. I--I suppose I had better seek a room for myself this--this afternoon?"

"The sooner, the better," the tone was unsympathetic, there were too many cases such as this, stored away among his files. "The less time you stay here, the more _kronen_ you will have for the year." He picked up his shining black hat, "I must bid you good morning, Miss Helmar. If there is anything I can do, let me know. Of course, I shall want to know your new address," and with a slight bow he left her.

Unpleasant as his crabbed features were, they were better than no one, and after the door had closed on his thin figure, she felt terrifyingly alone.

All her life she had been led to believe that Hunger and Want, those two cruel sisters, would never knock at her door, but here they were, actually grinning at her elbow. When this small sum that stood between her and starvation was gone, what was she to do? Suppose she couldn't get any pupils? Suppose she could find no way of earning her living. The thought sent her blond head down on her arms, and shook her slender, black-clad figure with sobs.

"Ach, Fräulein!" it was old Minna, the housekeeper, who found her, and whose broad hand tried to pat some comfort into the shaking shoulders. "Ach, Fräulein, you must not cry so, it is much better for the good Herr to be at rest. He was in pain so long, it is much better so."

"I am alone, Minna, I am alone," sobbed the girl, "nobody wants me, nobody needs me, I'm alone."

Minna dabbed her eye with the corner of her stiff white apron.

"You must not cry, Fräulein," she begged, "you must not cry! Come, lie down awhile, and when you are rested, you will feel better!"

"I must leave here, Minna," sobbed the girl, "I have no money now--I'm--I'm poor--I must go away--to-day. I don't know where! I don't know where!"

Minna's broad bosom heaved sympathetically.

"Why not go back to the good sisters at the Sacred Heart?" she suggested.

"That was my thought," replied Marie between her sobs, and indeed, all that first bitter night after her father's death, she had longed for the comforting arms of the Mother Superior, and the little French sister who had been her dearest friend.

"Why not go there, then?" The problem seemed so simple to the good German woman.

"I promised father," explained Marie, "that I wouldn't. You see, he was always afraid I would become a nun. He said I was never meant to be shut away from the world; but, oh, Minna, I'm so afraid."

"Tut-tut, Fräulein, what need you fear?" For Minna there was no danger that she could not meet with the aid of her ready tongue and able arms. "Can't you keep this pretty house?"

"I am poor now, Minna," Marie told her sadly. "I must find a place not so expensive, I must find pupils," and at the thought the golden head went down again on her folded arms.

The old woman stared at her.

"What about me?" she asked.

Marie lifted her head, startled.

"I don't know," she said, "I hadn't thought!"

Minna pursed her lips, her brow wrinkling into a heavy frown for a moment, then suddenly, her face cleared.

"Don't mind about me, Fräulein," she said. "I have been wanting a rest. I shall take it for a week. After that there are plenty of places for good housekeepers."

"But where can I go?" The blue eyes were very wistful, the world seemed so terrifyingly large and strange.

Minna thought a moment.

"If the Fräulein would not find it too plain," she ventured, "I can take her to a nice place."

"Nothing is too plain, Minna; don't you understand that I am poor? Will you take me there, now?"

"Of course, I will." Minna was all eagerness. "It is quite on the other side of the city, Fräulein, but it is clean, and I think we can get it cheap. My friend is a musician," this with some pride, "he and his wife live there. I'll get my bonnet. We'll go right away!" and she bustled out to prepare for the journey.

Marie sat a moment looking about her. The things she loved and which her father had taught her to understand, everything that had grown dear to her, she must leave them all, for the grim-faced Herr Gutman had made it very plain to her that it was only by selling all these that she was to have the means to live at all.

Slowly, she rose to her feet, and went into her little room with its pretty pink and white hangings, its dainty bed. For a long time she stood and stared at herself in the mirror. The sad face stared back at her, made whiter by the black of her mourning frock. There were deep shadows under her blue eyes, one or two strands of fair hair had escaped from their fastenings. Wearily she brushed them back and dried her tears. She pulled a small black leather trunk out of the cupboard and began packing it. The tears started afresh as she laid her belongings neatly in the trays and put in the dainty piles of lingerie. Marie loved beautiful things; she loved to feel the touch of fine linen next to her white skin. She loved the dainty ribbons, tied across her young breast. But ribbons, bows and silk stockings would be impossible in the future.

The last frock packed, the last pair of shoes put in, she closed and locked the little trunk, then, with trembling lips, she pinned on her black hat and slipped into her coat.

"I'm ready, Minna," she called, as she came back into the living-room, "we must waste no time."

The good woman bustled in, resplendent in her Sunday bonnet.

"I'm ready too, Fräulein," she said as she buttoned across her ample bosom the jacket that had evidently been made for her in less buxom days. "I'm ready too, shall we start?"

With a last look back, Marie went down the stairs and out into that world of which she knew so little.