At last she heard the quick trot, and then the snorting of an impatient horse at the closed door. "Father!" she cried out, hastily drawing back the bolt, and flying into his arms, as he dismounted. The Proprietor was much perplexed as he listened to her rapid report. He threw his horse's bridle to his son, and hastened to the nursery to embrace his little ones, who at the sight of their father remembered their misfortunes, and began to weep and lament.
When the Proprietor entered the farmyard, the farming people were drawn near the house, and the Inspector stated "that no one was to be seen near the fire or in the neighborhood. There was not a trace near the fire of their having encamped there. It had been lighted to mislead. Theft had been their only object here. The greater part of the band had left early in the evening. They are lying concealed somewhere in the woods, and when the sun rises they will be far beyond the frontier. I know the rascals of old."
"He is right," said the Proprietor to the friends, "and I think we have nothing more to fear. Yet we must be very watchful to-night. A poor father thanks you," he continued, with emotion. "The last day you have passed with us, Doctor, has been unpleasantly eventful, which is not usual with us."
"I must say I depart in anxiety about what I leave behind me," replied the Doctor, half jesting, half serious. "Just fancy that now the lost children of Asia are sneaking about these walls!"
"I hope we are rid of the rascals," continued the Proprietor, turning to his daughter; "but you may count upon a different visit soon; our sovereign will be here a few weeks hence. I have been called away only to hear gossip about his visit, and to learn that it is not yet decided where his Serene Highness will breakfast before the hunt. I know what that means. The same thing happened fifteen years ago. There is no help for it; he cannot remain at the Dragon at Rossau. But this visit will not cause us any very serious inconvenience. Let us now wish each other good night and sleep in peace."
Both friends entered their bedroom thoughtfully. The Professor stood at the window, and listened to the tread of the watchmen, who paced around the yard within and without, to the chirruping of the crickets, and to the broken sounds which reached the ear from the slumbering fields. He heard a noise near him, and looked into the countenance of his faithful friend, who in his excitement had clasped his hands.
"She is religious," began Fritz, doubtfully. "Are we not so also?" answered the Professor, drawing himself up to his full height.
"She is as far removed from the tenor of your mind as the holy Saint Elizabeth."
"She has sense," replied the Professor.
"She is firm and self-confident in her own circle, but she will never be at ease in your world."
"She has aptness here-she will have it everywhere."
"You blind yourself," cried Fritz, in despair; "will you disturb the peace of your life by a discord, the issue of which you cannot foresee? Will you demand of her the great change which she must undergo from being a thorough housekeeper to becoming the confidant of your profound investigations? Will you deprive her of the secure self-dependence of an active life and bring into her future, struggle, uncertainty, and doubt? If you will not think of your own peace, it is your duty to show consideration for her life."
The Professor leaned his hot head against the window. At last he began:
"But we are the servants and proclaimers of truth; and while we practice this duty towards every one who will hear us, is it not right and a duty to do it where we love?"
"Do not deceive yourself," answered Fritz. "You, the man of refined feeling, who so willingly recognize in every life the right to what befits it-you would be the last to disturb the harmony of her being, if you did not desire to possess her. What impels you is not a feeling of duty, but passion."
"What I do not demand of a stranger, it behooves me to fulfil in the woman with whom I unite myself for life. And must not every woman that comes to share our life experience a similar change? How high do you place the knowledge of the women in the city who come into our circle?"
"What they know is, as a rule, more unreliable than is good for them or for us," replied Fritz; "but from their youth they are accustomed to view the learning that interests men, with sympathy. The best results of intellectual work are so easily accessible to them that everywhere they find common ground on which they can meet. But here, however charming and admirable this life may appear to our eyes, it is attractive just because it is so strange and different from ours."
"You exaggerate, you distort," cried the Professor. "I have felt deeply in the time that we have passed here how great are the rights that a noble passion has over one's life. This we have forgotten over our books. Who can tell what it is that makes two human beings so love one another, that they cannot part? It is not only pleasure in the existence of the other, nor the necessity of making one's own being complete, nor feeling and fancy alone, which joins the object of our love-although heretofore a stranger-so intimately to us. Is it necessary that the wife should only be the finer reed, which always sounds the same notes that the husband plays-only an octave higher? Speech is incapable of expressing the joy and exultation that I feel when near her; and I can only tell you, my friend, that it is something good and great, and it demands its place in my life. What you now express are only the doubts of cold reason, which is an enemy to all that is in process of becoming, and continues to raise its pretensions until it is subdued by accomplished realities."
"It is not alone reason," replied Fritz, offended. "I did not deserve that you should so misconstrue what I have said. If it was presumptuous in me to speak to you concerning feelings which you now consider sacred, I must say in excuse, that I only assume the right which your friendship has hitherto granted me. I must do my duty to you before I leave you here. If I cannot convince you, try to forget this conversation. I shall never touch upon this theme again."
He left the Professor standing at the window, and went to his bed. He softly took off his boots, threw himself upon the bed, and turned his face to the wall. After a short time he felt his hand seized, the Professor was sitting by his bed clasping his friend's hand without saying a word. At last Fritz withdrew his hand with a hearty pressure and again turned to the wall.
He rose in the early dawn, gently approached the slumbering Professor, and then quietly left the room. The Proprietor awaited him in the sitting-room; the carriage came; there was a short friendly parting, and Fritz drove away, leaving his friend alone among the crickets of the field and the ears of corn, whose heavy heads rose and fell like the waves of the sea under the morning breeze, the same this year as they had done thousands and thousands of years before.
The Doctor looked back at the rock on which the old house stood, on the terraces beneath, with the churchyard and wooden church, and on the forest which surrounded the foot of the hill; and all the past and the present of this dangerous place rose distinctly before him. Its ancient character of Saxon times had altered little; and he looked on the rock and the beautiful Ilse of Bielstein, as they would have been in the days of yore. Then the rock would have been consecrated to a heathen god. At that time there would have been a tower standing on it. And Ilse would have dwelt there, with her golden hair, in a white linen dress with a garment of otter skin over it. She would have been priestess and prophetess of a wild Saxon race. Where the church stood would have been the sacrificial altar, from which the blood of prisoners of war would have trickled down into the valley.
Again, later, a Christian Saxon chief would have built his log-house there, and again the same Ilse would have sat between the wooden posts in the raised apartment of the women, using her spindle, or pouring black mead into the goblets of the men.
Again, centuries later it would have been a walled castle, with stone mullions to the windows, and a watch-turret erected on the rock; it had become a nest for predatory barons, and Ilse of Bielstein again dwelt there, in a velvet hood which her father had robbed from a merchant on the king's highway. And when the house was assaulted by enemies. Ilse stood among the men on the wall and drew the great crossbow, like a knight's squire.
Again, hundreds of years later, she sat in the hunting-lodge of a prince, with her father, an old warrior of Swedish times. Than she had become pious, and, like a city dame, she cooked jams and preserves, and went down to the pastor to the conventicle. She would not have worn flowers, and sought to know what husband Heaven destined for her by putting her finger at hazard on a passage in the Bible.
And now his friend had met this same Saxon child, tall and strong in body and soul, but still a child of the middle ages, with a placid expression in her beautiful countenance which only changed when the heart was excited by any sudden passion; a mind as if half asleep, and of a nature so child-like and pliant that it was sometimes impossible to know whether she was wise or simple. In her character there still remained something of all those Ilses of the two thousand years that had passed away-a mixture of Sibyl, mead-dispenser, knight's daughter, and pietist. She was of the old German type and the old German beauty, but that she should suddenly become the wife of a Professor, that appeared to the troubled Doctor too much against all the laws of quiet historical development.
CHAPTER X.
THE WOOING
A few hours after his friend had left the estate, the Professor entered the study of the Proprietor, who exclaimed, looking up from his work: "The gypsies have disappeared, and with them your friend. We are all sorry that the Doctor could not remain longer."
"With you lies the decision whether I too shall be permitted to tarry longer here," rejoined the Professor, with such deep earnestness that the host arose, and looked inquiringly at his guest. "I come to ask of you a great boon," continued the Professor, "and I must depart from here if you refuse it me."
"Speak out. Professor," replied he.
"It is impossible for us to continue longer in the open relations of host and guest. For I now seek to win the love of your daughter Ilse."
The Proprietor started, and the hand of the strong man grasped the table.
"I know what I ask of you," cried the Scholar, in an outburst of passion. "I know that I claim the highest and dearest treasure you can give. I know that I shall make your life thereby the poorer. For I shall take from your side what has been your joy, support, and pride."
"And yet," murmured the Proprietor gloomily, "you spare me the trouble of saying that!"
"I fear that at this moment you look upon me as an intruder upon the peace of your home," continued the Professor; "but though it may be difficult for you to be indulgent towards me, you ought to know all. I first saw her in the church, and her religious fervor impressed me powerfully. I have lived in the house with her, and felt more every hour how beautiful and lovable she is. The influence she exercises over me is irresistible. The passion with which she has inspired me has become so great, that the thought of being separated from her fills me with dismay. I long to be united to her and to make her my wife."
Thus spoke the Scholar, as ingenuously as a child.
"And to what extent have you shown your feelings to my daughter?" asked the father.
"I have twice in an outburst of emotion touched her hand," answered the Professor.
"Have you ever spoken to her of your love?"
"If I had I should not stand before you now as I do," rejoined the Professor. "I am entirely unknown to you, and was brought here by peculiar circumstances; and I am not in the happy position of a wooer who can appeal to a long acquaintance. You have shown me unusual hospitality, and I am in duty bound not to abuse your confidence. I will not, unbeknown to you, endeavor to win a heart that is so closely bound up in your life."
The father inclined his head assentingly. "And have you the assurance of winning her love?"
"I am no child and can see that she is warmly-attached to me. But of the depth and duration of the feelings of a young girl neither of us can judge. At times I have had the happy conviction that she cherished a tender passion for me, but it is just the unembarrassed innocence of her feelings that makes me uncertain; and I must confess to you that I know it is possible for those feelings to pass away."
The father looked at this man who thus endeavored to judge impartially, but whose whole frame was trembling. "It is, sir, my duty to yield to the wishes of my child's heart, if they are powerful enough to induce her to leave her home for that of another man-provided that I myself have not the conviction that it would be detrimental to her happiness. Your acquaintance with my daughter has been so short that I do not feel myself in the difficult position of having to give my consent, or to make my daughter unhappy, and your confession makes it possible for me to prevent what would, perhaps, in many respects, be unwelcome to me. Yes, even now you are a stranger to me, and when I invited you to stay with us I did something that may have an unfortunate sequel for me and mine."
As the Proprietor spoke thus in the excitement of the moment, his eyes fell upon the arm which had bled yesterday, and then on the manly features of the pale countenance before him. He broke off his speech, and laying his hand on the shoulder of the other exclaimed: – "No, that is not the sentiment of my heart, and I ought not to answer you thus."
He paced up and down the room endeavoring to find composure.
"But you must listen to a word of confidence, and regard what I say as not the promptings of importunacy," he continued, more tranquilly. "I know well that I have not brought up my daughter for myself, and that I must at some time accustom myself to do without her. But our acquaintance is too short to judge whether my child would find peace or happiness if she were united to you. When I tell you that I honor you and take pleasure in your society, that admission does not affect the question I have to solve. If you were a country gentleman like me, I should listen to your communications with a lighter heart, for during the time of your stay here I should have been able to form a definite opinion of your qualifications. The difference of our vocations makes it not only difficult for me to judge of you, but also dangerous for the future of my child. If a father wishes his daughter to marry a man who pursues an occupation similar to his own, he is justified in so doing in every sphere of life, and more especially is it so with a country gentleman of my stamp; for the qualifications of our children consist partly in this, that they grow up as the helpmeets of their parents. What Ilse has learnt in my house gives me the assurance that, as the wife of a country gentleman, she would fill her place perfectly; nay, she might supply the deficiencies of her husband, and that would secure her a comfortable life, even though her husband did not possess all that was to be desired. As the wife of a Professor, she will have little use for what she knows, and she will feel unhappy at not having learnt many other things."
"I admit that she will be deprived of much; I lay little stress on what you call her deficiencies," said the Professor. "I request you to trust this matter to me and the future."
"Then, Professor, I will answer you as candidly as you have spoken to me. I must not decline your proposal hastily. I will not oppose what may perhaps be for the happiness of my daughter. Yet I cannot, with the imperfect knowledge which I have of your position, assent to it. And I am at this moment in the awkward position of not knowing how I can obtain this knowledge."
"I can well understand how unsatisfactory to you must be any opinion concerning me which you may gather from strangers. Yet you will have to be content to do so," continued the Professor, with dignity.
The father assented silently.
"First," continued the Professor, "I beg to inform you concerning my pecuniary circumstances."
He mentioned his income, gave a faithful account of the sources from which he derived it, and laid a written statement on the writing-table.
"My legal adviser, who bears a high repute in the University, will give you any confirmation you may wish of these details. With respect to my capacity as teacher and my position at the University, I must refer you to the judgment of my colleagues and the opinion which is held concerning it in the city."
The Proprietor looked at the statement.
"Even the significance of these sums as regards your position is not quite clear to me. Having no acquaintance in your town, I have no facilities for obtaining further information concerning you. But, Professor, I will without delay endeavor to obtain all the information I can. I will start for the city of your residence to-morrow."
"How I thank you!" exclaimed the Professor, grasping his hand.
"Not yet," said the Proprietor, withdrawing it.
"I will, of course, if you like, accompany you," continued the Professor.
"I do not wish that," replied the Proprietor. "You need only write letters of introduction for me to your acquaintances. For the rest I must rely upon my own inquiries and on chance. But, Professor, this journey will only confirm your statements, of the truth of which I am already convinced. I may obtain the judgment of others concerning you, which will no doubt accord with mine. But let us suppose that the information is satisfactory to me, what will be the consequence?"
"That you will permit me to prolong my stay in your house," said the Professor; "that you will trustingly permit me to pay my addresses to your daughter; and that you will give your consent to our marriage as soon as I am certain of your daughter's affection."
"Such preliminaries to wooing are uncommon," said the father, with a saddened smile; "but they are not unwelcome to a farmer. We are accustomed to see fruits ripen slowly. Thus, Professor, after my journey we shall all three retain freedom of choice and a final decision. This conversation-shall it remain a secret?"
"I entreat you, yes," said the Professor.
Again a slight smile flitted over the grave countenance of the host.
"In order to make so sudden a journey less surprising you had better remain here. But, during my absence, refrain from any increase of intimacy with my daughter. You see what great confidence I place in you."
Thus the Professor had compelled his host to become the confidant of his love. It was a delightful compact between passion and conscience that the scholar had entered into, and yet there was an error in this arrangement. The agreement, which he had effected with eager spirit and beating heart, turned out a little different from the manner in which he had represented it to himself and to the father; for, between the three individuals who were now to enter upon this high-minded method of wooing, all easy intercourse had suddenly vanished. When Ilse, beaming with happiness, met the gentlemen on the morning of the eventful conversation, she found her heaven obscured and overshadowed with dark clouds. The Professor was uneasy and gloomy. He worked almost the whole day in his room, and when the little ones in the evening begged him to tell them some stories, he declined, took hold of the head of the little sister with both hands, kissed her forehead and laid his own head upon it as if he wished the child to support him. The words that he addressed to Ilse were few and constrained, and yet his eyes were fixed incessantly upon her, but inquiringly and doubtingly; and Ilse was surprised also at her father, who appeared absent-minded and sorrowful. A secret had arisen between her father and herself that deeply absorbed him; nay, even between the two men matters were not as they had been. Her father, indeed, spoke sometimes in a low voice to the friend, but she observed a constraint in both when they talked on indifferent subjects.
Then the next morning there was the secret journey of the father, which in few words he described as on unimportant business. Had everything changed about her since that eventful evening? Her heart beat anxiously. A sense of insecurity came over her-the fear of something direful that was to befall her. Sorrowfully she withdrew to her room, where she struggled with bitter thoughts and avoided being alone with the man she loved.
Of course the change became at once perceptible to the Professor, and it tortured the sensitive man. Did she wish to repel him in order not to abandon her father? Had that been only pleased astonishment which he had taken for affection of the heart? These anxieties made his demeanor constrained and unequal, and the change in his frame of mind reacted in turn upon Ilse.
She had joyfully opened the flower-bud of her soul to the rising light, but a drop of morning dew had fallen into it and the tender petals had closed again under the burden.
Ilse had acted as doctress and nurse to all who were ill or wounded on the estate. She had succeeded her mother in this honorable office; her fame in the district was considerable, and it was not an unnecessary accomplishment, for Rossau did not possess even one regular practitioner. Ilse knew how to apply her simple remedies admirably; even her father and the Inspectors submitted themselves obediently to her care. She had become so accustomed to the vocation of a Sister of Charity that it did not shock her maidenly feelings to sit by the sick-bed of a working man and she looked without prudery at a wound which had been caused by the kick of a horse or the cut of a scythe. Now the loved one was near her with his wound, not even keeping his arm in a sling, and she was fearful lest the injury should become greater. How glad she would have been to see the place and to have bandaged it herself! – and in the morning, at breakfast, she entreated him, pointing to his arm: "Will you not, for our sakes, do something for it?"
The Professor, embarrassed, drew his arm back and replied, "It is too insignificant."
She felt hurt and remained silent; but when he went to his room her anxiety became overpowering. She sent the charwoman, who was her trusty assistant in this art, with a commission to him, and enjoined her to enter with an air of decision and, overcoming any opposition of the gentleman, to examine the arm and report to her. When the honest woman said that she was sent by the young lady and that she must insist upon seeing the wound, the Professor, though hesitatingly, consented to show his arm. But when the messenger conveyed a doubtful report, and Ilse, who had been pacing restlessly up and down before the door, again ordered cold poultices through her deputy, the Professor would not apply them. He had good reason; for however painfully he felt the constraint that was imposed upon him in his intercourse with Ilse, yet he felt it would be insupportable entirely to lose sight of her and sit alone in his room with a basin of water. His rejection of her good counsel, however, grieved Ilse still more; for she feared the consequences, and, besides, it pained her that he would not accede to her wishes. When, afterwards, she learnt that he had secretly sent to Rossau for a surgeon, tears came into her eyes, for she considered it as a slight. She knew the pernicious remedies of the drunken quack and she was sure, that evil would result from it. She struggled with herself until evening; at last, anxiety for her beloved overcame all considerations, and when he was sitting with the children in the arbor, she, with anguish of heart and downcast eyes, thus entreated him: "This stranger will occasion you greater pain. I pray you, let me see the wound."
The Professor, alarmed at this prospect which threatened to upset all the self-control which he had attained by laborious struggling, answered, as Ilse fancied, in a harsh tone-but, in truth, he was only a little hoarse through inward emotion-"I thank you, but I cannot allow that."
Ilse then caught hold of her brother and sister who had been in the hands of the gypsies, placed them before him, and exclaimed eagerly: "Do you beseech him, if he will not listen to me."
This little scene was so moving to the Professor, and Ilse looked, in her excitement, so irresistibly lovely, that his composure was overpowered; and in order to remain faithful to her father, he rose and went rapidly out of the garden.
Ilse pressed her hands convulsively together and gazed wildly before her. All had been a dream; the hope she had entertained in a happy hour that he loved her had been a delusion. She had revealed her heart to him, and her warm feelings had appeared to him as the bold forwardness of a stranger. She was in his eyes an awkward country girl, deficient in the refined tact of the city, who had got something into her foolish head because he had sometimes spoken to her kindly. She rushed into her room. There she sank down before her couch and her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs.
She was not visible for the rest of the evening. The following day she met the loved one proudly and coldly, said no more than was necessary and struggled secretly with tears and endless sorrow.
All had been arranged for a refined and tender wooing. But when two human beings love one another they ought to tell each other so, frankly and simply, without any previous arrangement, and, indeed-without reserve.
The father had started on his journey. He gave as an excuse some business that he meant to transact on the road. The day following his massive form and anxious countenance might be seen in the streets of the University town. Gabriel was much astonished when the gigantic man, taller than his old friend the sergeant-major of the cuirassiers, rang at the door and brought a letter from his master, in which Gabriel was instructed to place himself and the lodging at the disposal of the gentleman. The stranger walked through the rooms, sat down at the Professor's writing-table and began a cross-questioning conversation with Gabriel, the tenor of which the servant could not understand. The stranger also greeted Mr. Hummel, then went to the University, stopped the students in the street and made inquiries of them; had a conference with the lawyer; visited a merchant with whom he had had dealings in corn; was conducted by Gabriel to the Professor's tailor, there to order a coat, and Gabriel had to wait long at the door before the gossiping tailor would let the stranger go. He also went to Mr. Hahn to buy a straw hat; and in the evening the tall figure might be seen uncomfortably bent under the Chinese temple, conversing with Mr. Hahn, over a flask of wine. It was a poor father anxiously seeking from indifferent people intelligence which should determine whether he should give his beloved child into the arms of a stranger. What he learnt was even more favorable than he expected. He now discovered what Mrs. Rollmaus had long known, that he whom he had received into his home was, according to the opinion of others, no common man.
When, on returning home, the evening of the following day, he reached the first houses of Rossau, he saw a figure hastening towards him. It was the Professor, who, in impatient expectation, had come to meet him and now hastened up to the carriage with disturbed countenance. The Proprietor sprang from his seat and said gently to the Professor:
"Remain with us, and may Heaven give you every blessing."
As the two men walked up the foot-path together, the Proprietor continued, with a sudden flash of good humor:
"You have compelled me, dear Professor, to act as a spy about your dwelling-place. I have learned that you lead a quiet life, and that you pay your bills punctually. Your servant speaks reverentially of you, and you stand high in the opinion of your neighbors. In the city you are spoken of as a distinguished man, and what you have said of yourself is in all respects confirmed. Your lodgings are very handsome, the kitchen is too small, and your storeroom is smaller than one of our cupboards. From your windows you have at least some view of the country."
Beyond this not a word was spoken concerning the object of the journey, but the Professor listened hopefully to the other observations of the Proprietor, how opulent were the citizens, and how brilliant the shops, also of the height of the houses in the market-place, the throngs of people in the streets, and of the pigeons, which, according to old custom, were kept by the town council, and boldly hopped about like officials among the carriages and passing human beings.
It was early morning, and again the first rays of the sun warmed the earth. After a sleepless night, Ilse hastened through the garden to the little bath-house that her father had built among the reeds and bushes. There she bathed her white limbs in the water, dressed herself quickly and ascended the path which passed by the grotto to the top of the hill, seeking the rays of the sun. As she knew that the cool night air still lay in the lower ground, she climbed still higher, where the hill sloped steeply towards the grotto down into the valley. There, on the declivity, among the copse, she seated herself, far from every human eye, drying her hair in the sun's rays and arranging her morning attire.
She gazed upon her father's house where she supposed the friend still lay slumbering, and looked down before her on the stone roof of the grotto, and on the large tuft of the willow rose, with the white wool of its seed bursting from the pod. She supported her head on her hand, and thought of the evening that had past. How little he had spoken, and her father had scarcely mentioned his journey. But whatever anxious cares passed through her mind, her spirits had been refreshed by the sparkling water, and now the morning cast its mild light over her heart.