Only a Girl Part 55

"To myself, for no human being can belong to any other!" And her look at Johannes was almost one of aversion. "Yes, now I see that you are your mother's' son. I see her stern features, I hear her voice of remonstrance, and I see myself between you,--a creature without will,--no longer capable of independent thought or feeling, still less of rendering any service to the world. Am I to cast aside like a garment what has been the guiding hope of my life,--my dream by night and day,--and go to your mother begging for forgiveness and indulgence, excusing myself like a child, and promising future improvement, that I may humbly receive from her cold lips the kiss of condescending pardon?

Again and again, No! What right has your mother to regard me as a criminal, and to attempt to improve me? Whom have I injured? What law of propriety have I infringed, that she should treat me like some noxious thing in the world? I have lived in calm retirement, asking for no happiness but that of labour. Why should she insist upon thrusting another kind of happiness upon me, and blame me for not considering it as such? Did I seek her out? Was it not against my will, and only in accordance with your earnest entreaties, that I accompanied you to her house? Why should she drive me from it like an intruder, and impose upon me conditions of a return that I did not desire? Oh, if you, n.o.ble and true as I once thought you, had loved me, not as you thought I ought to be, but as I am, with all my faults and eccentricities, I would have striven for your sake to become the most perfect woman in the world. And if you had said to me, 'Be my companion,--I will help you to vindicate the honour of your s.e.x, whatever is sacred to you shall be so to me also,'--if you had thus acknowledged my individuality, and had intrusted your happiness, your honour, to my keeping, without other warranty than the dictates of your own heart, I would have bowed in reverence to a love so powerful,--I would gladly have sacrificed my freedom to you,--to please you, I would have performed the hardest task of all--humiliated myself before your haughty mother! But when you come to me thus,--only her echo,--when you make it the foundation of our happiness that I should be what she chooses, and try to a.s.sure yourself at the outset that I will submit to all your requirements, that you may run no risk from such a self-willed creature,--all this shows me that she has separated us utterly. I have lost you, and all that you have given me is the knowledge that I have no place in this world, and that I am miserable!"

Johannes stood pale and mute before her, but his pure conscience shone in his steady eyes. Ernestine did not venture to look at him. With trembling hands she plucked to pieces a twig that she had just broken from a bush at her side.

"After this we can be nothing more to each other," he began; and it seemed as if every word fell from his lips into her heart like molten lead. He took breath, as if after some violent physical exertion, and then continued: "I do not answer the accusations with which you have overwhelmed my mother and myself. They grieve me for your sake. They are unworthy of your n.o.bler self. I have treated you as I was compelled to do by my sense of honour. I have told you what was, according to my profoundest convictions, indispensable to the happiness of marriage.

That you refuse,--that you can refuse me the sacrifice I ask of you,--proves to me that you do not love me. This is what separates us.

And I pray you to remember that, as I sacredly believe, it is the duty of a man to convince himself that the woman whom he seeks to marry is fitted to be the mother of his children; and your heart is not yet open to the wide, self-forgetting affection that can alone suffice to enable a woman to undertake the hard duties of a wife and mother. Will it ever be thus open? Who can tell? Another may one day reap in joy what I have sown in pain. I do not reproach you,--how could I?" He laid his hand upon her head, his eyes were for one moment suffused. As he looked at her, grief had the mastery, and he was silent. She was crushed beneath his gaze, her artificial composure forsook her, a cry escaped her lips.

She now first began to perceive what she had done, and her heart shrunk from the burden that she had laid upon it, although she did not as yet dream of its weight.

Johannes gently smoothed her hair from her brow. Her agitation restored his self-control.

"You are kind, Ernestine,--you see how you have hurt me, and you are sorry for me. It is the way with women. This little weakness does you honour in my eyes. I pray you be composed. I am quite calm again." He would have withdrawn his hand, but she held it fast and looked up at him with those eyes of sad entreaty that had worked such magic upon him when she was a child.

"Do not utterly forsake me!" she whispered in half-stifled accents.

"No, as truly as I trust my G.o.d will not forsake me, I will not forsake you. I will not shun you like a coward, who, to make renunciation easy and to learn forgetfulness, turns his back upon the good he cannot attain. You need a friend who can protect you, placed as you are with regard to your uncle and the world. This friend I will be to you, until you find a worthier. Do not fear that you will hear another word of love, or of regret. I will conquer my grief alone. My one care shall be for your happiness. Farewell, and when you have need of me send for me." He pressed her hands once more, and turned away without another word.

Ernestine looked after him as he receded from her gaze. She looked and looked until he turned a corner and vanished. Then she sank on her knees and cried in an outburst of anguish, "Have I really had the strength to do this?"

She must have remained thus some time beneath the shade of the trees, when the sound of carriage-wheels approaching startled her to consciousness. It was her uncle. He stopped the vehicle and descended from it.

"You can take out the horses," he said to the coachman. "I shall not drive to town." The man turned and drove home again.

Leuthold stood mute before Ernestine, piercing her soul with his penetrating glance. He had learned from Frau Willmers everything that had occurred the day before, but nothing of the intercourse that had previously taken place between Ernestine and Johannes. Scarcely a week had pa.s.sed, and had his ward already escaped him--fled with an utter stranger? The thing was impossible. Ernestine was no coward,--a crowd of drunken peasants could never have driven the shy girl into the arms of the first stranger whom she met. She must have previously known her magnanimous champion. He interrogated the other servants, but they one and all hated him and were devoted to Frau Willmers. They all declared their entire ignorance,--"the Fraulein must have met the gentleman at the school-house,--he was often there."

This was enough to prove to Leuthold that the ground was unsteady beneath his feet, and for a moment he succ.u.mbed under the weight of this new anxiety. Was it possible to guard a woman more strictly, to seclude her more utterly, than he had guarded and secluded Ernestine?

And yet--yet in this heart, that he thought long since dead, impulses were strong that would seek and find expression in spite of every precaution that he might take. And all this at a moment when he was battling for life and death with a peril which required younger and more unbroken energies than his own!

It was too much; a presentiment seized him that fate had decreed his ruin. But he collected himself once more, and took counsel with himself, as was his custom in all emergencies. As we turn to Heaven when all around us seems dark, so he turned in his direst need to his own understanding and will, that had hitherto sufficed him.

Allowing himself but brief refreshment after all his anxiety and alarm, he ordered the carriage and set out for town to bring home his ward.

But, to his great surprise and delight, he found her thus near home, evidently weary and disconsolate.

"Aha, like the mermaid in your beloved fable, you have been trying your fortunes among mankind, away from your cool, clear, native element," he said to himself with a smile. "They liked you well, I doubt not, at first sight, but you have not gained much, for they soon discovered that you were half fish and not fit to live with them!"

As he approached her, he put on an expression of distress, and when the coachman had gone he began in a tone of great anxiety, "Merciful heavens, do I find you thus? Weeping by the roadside like a homeless beggar!"

"True, true indeed,--like a homeless beggar," Ernestine repeated.

"But, my dear child, is this becoming,--such a scene in this open spot,--writhing on the ground here like a worm?"

She looked at him. He had on a broad-brimmed, light-gray felt hat. As ever, his costume was faultless. Standing before her with a lowering glance, his tall, supple figure now bending down to her, his eyes riveted upon her, he it was that seemed to her like a worm, and a most poisonous one, and with unmistakable aversion she sprang up and recoiled from him.

He stepped back and looked at her with amazement. "What! is this Ernestine von Hartwich, whom I have educated--whose philosophical composure nothing could disturb? or is this wayward child a changeling, brought hither by some evil sprite?"

"Spare me your sneers, uncle," said Ernestine imperiously. "They disgust me!"

Leuthold's amazement increased still further. "What--what words are these? Is this what is taught at Frau Staatsrathin Mollner's? Upon my word, Ernestine, I believe you are ill."

"Yes, yes, I am, and I pray you to leave me. You cannot restore me to health."

"What an amount of mischief has been done in these few days when you were without my advice and protection! It is true, I cannot tell what has happened, but something serious must have occurred. I forbear to reproach you for making acquaintances without my knowledge, and for leaving the house without my permission, and thus causing me great anxiety, for I see you are sufficiently punished already, but, I beg of you, do not do so again. You see now what comes of it."

"And I beg of you, uncle, not to treat me thus, like a child, who must say, after she has been chastised, 'I will not do so again!' If I wished to return to the world, of which I had my first experience yesterday, you could not forbid me to do so, for"--involuntarily she repeated what the Staatsrathin had said--"you cannot forbid my doing what does not infringe the law. But I do not, and never shall, wish to return,--never! I am out of place among other people. I do not understand their ways, nor they mine." She looked at Leuthold with suspicion. "I do not know whether you have been right in bringing me up as a perfect recluse,--in making me so unfit for life in the world. Who can tell that it would not have been better to leave me my simplicity of heart, and not to have led me into paths whence there is no return?

I will struggle on in my lonely way as never woman struggled before, until the day comes when I can convince and shame the most incredulous.

But let me tell you, uncle, that if the day never comes when my fame atones to me for all the happiness I have resigned,--then, uncle, I shall curse you!"

She spoke the last words with an expression that alarmed even the cold-blooded Leuthold. In an instant he grasped the whole situation. He saw that she had made some sacrifice to her ambition that was almost too great for her strength. His ready wit soon divined what had occurred. It was a blow, of the significance of which he was perfectly aware. He felt that he had reached a crisis that demanded all his caution and forethought, and he did not venture to speak until he had pondered well what course to adopt. Thus they arrived at the gate of the castle-garden in silence. He opened it for Ernestine to pa.s.s in. As they walked past the spot where she had stood with Johannes on the previous evening, Ernestine burst into tears. Leuthold looked at her in surprise, and she controlled herself and walked hastily on. As always, he had the effect of cold water upon her. Her wound did not bleed in his presence.

"I was greatly irritated when I learned, upon my arrival this morning, what had happened," he began at last "Our very lives are not secure in the midst of this mob of ignorant peasants. We must seriously think of removing elsewhere,--we cannot possibly remain here."

Ernestine made a gesture of dissent.

"What, you do not wish to go? What can induce you to stay here, where all are so hostile to you?"

Ernestine did not reply. After a pause she said curtly, "Very well. You have proposed our departure,--that is enough for the present I will think of it."

They entered the house.

"Ernestine, I have brought you the sphygmometer I promised you,--would you like to see it?"

"No, I will go to my room and rest."

Leuthold knew not what to do. He did not wish to leave her to herself, but would have made use of her agitation to extort her secret from her.

She had reached the door when he cried after her, "Apropos, Ernestine!

I congratulate you!"

"Upon what?"

"I committed an indiscretion this morning, and found upon your table the essay that you have withheld from me for so long. I a.s.sure you, Ernestine, I was actually astounded! It is far beyond anything you have ever done before,--it will be a perfect bomb-sh.e.l.l in the scientific world!"

Ernestine dropped the handle of the door and looked sadly at him. "Do you think so?" She shook her head. "They will not pay it any attention."

"Oh, you are mistaken. It must make its mark. Be easy upon that point.

How did such a magnificent thought occur to you?"

"As such thoughts always occur,--if it can only be verified!"

"Oh, most certainly it can be verified. I'll warrant its correctness.

Girl, there is a great future in store for you. I thought I knew you, but you continually surprise me by your genius."

"Oh, uncle, I scarcely dare to hope. I know now how men despise the attainments of learned women. There is no use in talking or writing unless I can adduce proofs, irrefragable proofs, that are accessible to all. The science of to-day demands facts, and, if I cannot procure them, I can never convince these prejudiced minds."

"Be a.s.sured that every one who reads that paper of yours will be spurred on to make experiments in the matter. Leave it to those practised in technicalities to work out the demonstration. The merit of the idea will always be yours."

"And even if they find it worth the trouble to investigate the matter, and then do it so carelessly that they do not arrive at the desired result, it will always be thought a mere hypothesis, and I a learned fool. Madame du Chatelet was laughed at for publis.h.i.+ng her novel idea that the different colours of the spectrum gave out different degrees of heat. What did it profit her that Rochon, forty years afterwards, hit on the experiments that yielded the proof of her hypothesis?[1] She had long been mouldering in the grave, and not a laurel had ever been laid upon it. Oh, this is a miserable existence! How long must we toil on thus, step by step?"

Involuntarily she left the door of her room, and approached her uncle.