Only a Girl Part 20

"Hilsborn is far from wrong," said Meibert; "but can such a mind quench its thirst for knowledge nowhere but in a University? The lady has certainly proved in the treatise before us that she has learned something outside of the walls of the lecture-room. What does she want of a degree? It must be vanity that suggests the want, and we are to blame if we lend ourselves to the gratification of such a folly."

"That is my opinion also," added Beck.

But Hilsborn was not silenced. "It seems very natural to me that a woman who feels herself possessed of the mental power of a man should aspire to manly dignities, and her desire to espouse science, not as an amus.e.m.e.nt, but as the occupation and end of her existence, is a proof of her deep conviction of its grave importance. There is certainly nothing here of the female vanity which resorts to bodily and mental adornment merely for the sake of pleasing."

"You are a brave champion, Hilsborn," said Mollner, holding out his hand to the young man.

"Then we are only three against four," said old Heim. "Mollner's vote alone is wanting,--and if he gives it in favour of the Hartwich, there will be a tie; so I propose that we give him the casting vote, especially as he, as a physiologist, is best capable of judging of the value of the essay before us."

"I should have thought," cried Moritz, "that any one of us could have pa.s.sed judgment upon such a piece of dilettanteism; it is only the modern nonsense about the fibres. There is not much in it!"

All present looked eagerly towards Johannes, who was calmly leaning back in his arm-chair. "It is no piece of dilettanteism. I grant that it is hasty and one-sided to attempt to ascribe all self-control to the impediments of reflex motion; nevertheless, Fraulein Hartwich's essay evinces a comprehension of the physiology of the nervous system far beyond what is usual, and I cannot deny that such a self-dependent realization of scholars.h.i.+p is a proof of the most decided creative faculty." Here he looked at Herbert.

"Indeed?" said the latter pointedly.

"Yes!" said Mollner with warmth; "but, nevertheless, I give my vote against her admission; and of course that decides the matter,--we are now five to three!" The gentlemen looked at one another, some with surprise, some with annoyance.

"What do you mean?" cried Heim. "You were thoroughly delighted to-day with the girl's talent."

"We relied upon you," said Hilsborn reproachfully.

"This is the first injustice of which I have ever convicted my friend Mollner," said Taun, shaking his head.

Johannes looked at his dismayed a.s.sociates with quiet amus.e.m.e.nt, and did not observe that Herbert extended his hand to him to thank him for his a.s.sistance.

"G.o.d be thanked," he muttered, "that you have given the fool her discharge!" And he swallowed the contents of his gla.s.s with evident satisfaction.

"Johannes! Johannes!" Hilsborn began again, "why have you treated the girl and ourselves in this manner?"

"Why?" asked Johannes,--and there was a glow in his face that quite transfigured it,--"because she is far more to me than to any of you."

"You have chosen a very odd method to show that it is so," Hilsborn remonstrated.

"Do you think so, short-sighted man?" asked Mollner gravely.

"What harm can it do you to make the Hartwich happy?" grumbled Hilsborn.

Mollner looked at him with a smile.--"When we take away from a child a knife with which it is playing, we do so, not because we are afraid it will harm us, but itself. True, the child will regard us as an enemy, but we act for its own sake."

"Well, is the Hartwich the child that you feel so bound to protect?"

"Yes, Hilsborn! Woman, of whatever age, is intrusted to the guardians.h.i.+p of man. It is ours to decide her future, to protect her; and we are responsible for her development. Which of you, my dear friends Heim, Taun, and Hilsborn, when I put it to your consciences, can deny that the Hartwich is treading a mistaken path,--that she is trespa.s.sing beyond the bounds that form the natural division-line between the s.e.xes? I have nothing to urge in opposition to the mental activity of woman, provided it be exercised within the limits of her proper sphere; and these limits I set far beyond the place a.s.signed her by our friend Herbert and my brother-in-law Moritz. But I have such a reverence for true womanhood that I will lend my aid to no project which can be carried out only at its expense."

"I think," said Moritz, "that the Hartwich must have already entirely renounced the womanhood of which you speak, or she never would have entertained such projects. There can't be much there to spoil."

"You judge hastily, Moritz, as you always do," said Johannes. "If you knew under what influences this girl has grown up, you would understand that it is not a want of delicacy, but lofty courage,--a pa.s.sionate, sacred enthusiasm,--that prevents her from shuddering at the horrors of the study of physiology and enables her to look beyond the individual to the universe. A dazzling light, flaming before our eyes, blinds us to what lies nearest us. Thus was it with this gifted girl when the light of science arose for her, enveloping with its glory the world of reality around her."

Moritz's face, usually so gay in expression, suddenly grew grave: he looked at Mollner with manifest anxiety.--"Johannes, you talk as if you had a personal interest in this preposterous creature!"

"Why should I deny it?--Yes, I have!"

"Good heavens!" cried Moritz, "you are not going to stand in friend Hilsborn's way? He seems to have serious intentions with regard to her."

"Oh, you are wrong there, Moritz," said Hilsborn. "Her perilous struggle for emanc.i.p.ation inspires me with sympathy, it is true, but with no desire for a closer knowledge of her. I may surely like to have her for a pupil without wanting to marry her."

"And there, Hilsborn," said Johannes gaily, "lies the difference between us; for I should wish to have her not for a pupil, but for a wife!"

An exclamation of dismay burst from the lips of all present. "How did you come to know her?" "Where did he know her?" the gentlemen, with the exception of Heim and Hilsborn, inquired.

"How the idea of my danger seems to startle you!" said Johannes good-humouredly. "Is the girl an evil spirit,--a witch? No, she is only a woman. How can you be afraid of a woman? What makes her terrible to you makes her interesting to me; and where is the danger for me, even if I should try to lead her out of her crooked path? Yes, even if she should become my wife----"

"Heaven save you from such a wife!" the Staatsrathin interposed.

"Matters have not yet gone quite so far, mother; there is nothing in the affair yet but pure human sympathy. But suppose it were to go further,--what then? The husband who is made unhappy by his wife has only himself to blame; for woman is just what we make her."

"Oh, presumptuous man!" exclaimed the Staatsrathin, "there are women who would prove your error to you after a terrible fas.h.i.+on! This Hartwich girl was to me a most disagreeable child,--what must she be now?"

"A woman who seems strayed from another world,--an apparition once seen never forgotten!"

"Heavens!" said the Staatsrathin, really alarmed, "where and when have you met her? She vanished almost ten years ago; and if her rationalistic books had not appeared last winter, every one would have forgotten her."

"Did you know her before, then?" several gentlemen asked curiously.

"We were playmates for some time," said Angelika, "but in the end I could not endure her, she was so old-fas.h.i.+oned and despised my dolls."

The gentlemen laughed.

"She was the most strangely interesting child I ever saw in my life!"

said old Heim.

"Indeed she was," said Mollner; "but there was something repellant about her, for she had been embittered by cruel treatment, which had developed her mind precociously, while it had stunted her body. Such incongruity is always disagreeable, and therefore every one shunned her, as she shunned every one. We soon forgot her, for she left our part of the country when she was twelve years old, and we heard nothing more either of her or of her guardian, who accompanied her. A year or more ago, however, a couple of brochures from her pen appeared, that excited a tempest of criticism, at least among women, on account of their rationalistic tendency. I did not think it worth while to read them, as the pale little Hartwich girl had almost faded from my memory.

No one knew anything about her, and we took no pains to know, for my mother and sister had been deeply shocked by the child's atheism, and had given her up. A short time since I went to see my friend Hilsborn, and met him just as he was getting into his carriage to drive to the village of Hochstetten, two miles off. He had been sent for to see the village schoolmaster. Hilsborn asked me to go with him, and, as the day was fine, I consented. When we arrived at the small castle that lies in the outskirts of the village, we alighted. Hilsborn went to find the schoolmaster,--I remained behind, to await his return, and walked slowly past the large, neglected garden, that surrounds the castle. A fresh breeze stirred the waving wheat-fields, and the setting sun shone through the quivering air upon the distant landscape. Suddenly, painted upon the flaming horizon, like the picture of a saint of the Middle Ages upon a golden background, appeared the figure of a woman dressed in black,--a woman so beautiful and sad that she might have been Night's messenger commanding the sun to set. She stood with folded arms, motionless, upon a little eminence in the garden, looking full at the descending orb of light, while the breeze stirred the heavy folds of her dress. The evening-red cast a glow upon her grave face, white as marble, and the light in her large eyes seemed not to proceed from the sun which they mirrored, but from within. I stared like a boy at the beautiful, silent apparition, and forgot that my gaze might annoy her should she become aware of it. And so it proved. As she took up some coloured gla.s.ses lying beside her, I saw with surprise that she was trying some optical experiment, and just then her glance fell upon me.

A shade of vexation pa.s.sed over her face, now turned from the light, and lent it a cold, stern expression. Without honouring me with a second glance, she gathered together her optical instruments and walked quietly down the little hill. Just then the sun disappeared below the horizon, as if at her command, and gloomy twilight gathered above the silent garden, in whose paths she disappeared. I could not picture to myself a happy face among those rank, thick bushes behind that high wall. I could not imagine a happy heart in the breast of that lonely, gloomy figure. Night fell while I was still vainly looking after her. I hurried on to the schoolmaster's, upon the pretence of finding Hilsborn, and learned from him that my unknown was Ernestine Hartwich.

She had, a short time before, rented the Haunted Castle, as it was called, and, as they were not very enlightened in the village, the beautiful girl was regarded with a sort of supernatural terror,--for certainly something must be wrong with one who lived so entirely cut off from intercourse with human beings, and who, worse than all, never went to church. There was some excuse to be found for her, to be sure, in the evil influence of a step-uncle and guardian, who had had charge of her since the early death of her parents, and who possessed entire authority over her. He is that famous, or rather infamous, Doctor Gleissert, of whom you have all heard."

"Oho! he!" murmured the gentlemen in a contemptuous tone, and old Heim bestowed upon him a hearty "Scoundrel!"

"Well," Johannes continued, "I am sure you will not imagine me such a fool as to have fallen in love at the first sight of a beautiful face, but the apparition that I have just described presented a combination of what is most attractive to a man,--'beauty, intellect, and virtue.'"

"Virtue!" Herbert repeated; "are you so sure of that?"

"Yes. If Fraulein Hartwich were not virtuous, she would not live in such strict retirement. Those who have tasted the cup of self-indulgence are too apt to return to it; the truly pure alone can find contentment in seclusion and loneliness, inspired only by a grand idea! I go still further, and, as a physiologist, upon the ground of the preservation of force, maintain that a woman engaged in such unusual and profound studies needs all her vital energy for her work, and is dead to all the pleasures of sense. Hence we so often find entire lack of sensibility in women accustomed to great mental activity,--because their supply of vital force is not sufficient for the double occupation of thinking and feeling. And therefore my only fear is that there is no warm heart throbbing within that exquisite form."

The professors looked significantly at one another, and the Staatsrathin exchanged anxious whispers with Angelika.

"Well," said Herbert, as he arose from his chair, "I propose that we leave our respected a.s.sociate to his dreams, and wish for his sake that his pupil may not be as accomplished upon the subject of the nerves of sensation as upon the inhibitory nerves."

The gentlemen all arose.