A Twofold Life Part 38

But the others would not yield at once, and began to plead again.

"If you understood the spirit that animates these features, you would beg no longer, for you would know it to be vain," cried Richard, with his usual artless pathos. Then he held out his hand to Cornelia and continued: "I should probably have the best right to entreat you for another sitting, since I was so great a loser; but I will not ask it after what you have just said."

"I thank you for your delicacy of feeling, Herr Richard," replied Cornelia, with unconcealed admiration. "You may be a.s.sured that if I sat to any of these gentlemen it would be to you; yet if you understand the reason of my refusal, you will not be angry if I make no exception, even in your favor."

Richard buried Cornelia's hand in his p.r.i.c.kly beard to press a kiss upon it. "Angry with you? Who that had the heart of a true artist could be? For, although we are not permitted to make portraits of you, we still owe you thanks for a type of beauty which will be of service to us all."

"Yes, yes; he is right," they all a.s.sented. "You have not only enriched our eyes, but our imaginations! Long live Cornelia Erwing! Hurrah!"

At that moment the sound of the dinner-h.e.l.l echoed from the inn, and at the same instant Severinus's black-robed figure appeared, coming from the neighboring convent. The artists wiped the perspiration from their brows, for the noonday sun and their zeal had made them very bot.

"There comes your pious father!" declaimed the young enthusiast, who always spoke in quotations. "Now, brothers, let us fly!"

And partly fear of the "black coat," partly hunger, drove the noisy group to the table. They departed waving their hats, nodding, and singing; and Cornelia was still looking after them with a smile, when Severinus approached with a pale, gloomy face.

"Such ovations certainly do not prepare one for the church," he murmured, somewhat bitterly.

"Ah, Severinus! I am so happy!" cried Cornelia, frankly. "What open-hearted, gay, magnificent men they are! How I laughed! It is a pity you were not here! Tell me, Father Severinus,--you are sincere,--am I really as beautiful as they all say?" she asked, with mischievous navete.

Severinus looked timidly away from her, and with a deep flush fixed his eyes upon the ground. "I do not know."

"You don't know?"

"I think only your soul beautiful, but not your body. Physical beauty is something so perishable that it is unheeded by one who perceives, and knows how to value, that of the soul."

Cornelia became embarra.s.sed. She was ashamed of the want of reserve which had induced her to ask Severinus so inappropriate a question, and did not see the strange glance with which he gazed at her blooming cheeks and lips, and then clinched his teeth.

"Forgive me for disturbing your grave mood with such jests, my reverend friend; but I cannot help it. The gayety natural to my youth will sometimes a.s.sert its rights. I was very glad they thought me beautiful.

The sight of a lovely face is always a pleasure to me, and the idea that my appearance could also rejoice the eyes and hearts of others pleased me. If this is vanity, is, at least, very innocent."

"Certainly, my child," said Severinus, and his tone gradually lost its a.s.sumed harshness. "I will not embitter the harmless little pleasures of your youth. I am sure they will not smother the earnestness of your nature."

"Severinus," said Cornelia, smiling, "isn't it a fact that you do not know what hunger is?"

"No, certainly not. But you seem to know; so come,--let us go to dinner."

Cornelia was glad to have put an end to the uncomfortable conversation, and hastened lightly on before him. Since her joy in life was once more awakened, and hope and cheerfulness again stirred within her, she felt Severinus's gloomy mood as a heavy burden. As long as she was at variance with her own heart and the world, the character of the ascetic priest suited her better than aught else; but now it began to form a disagreeable contrast with her mood, and cast a shadow over the newly-risen sun of her love. Yet she was too grateful to forget for a moment what consolation his a.s.sistance had afforded her in the time of her heavy visitation; so she maintained an unaltered, frank cordiality towards him, although he now began to torture her with a thousand contradictions and absurdities.

The scene with the artists, innocent as it was in itself, seemed to have made Severinus very thoughtful, in consequence of the pleasure Cornelia derived from it. Such impressions must be kept from her at any cost, for they were not adapted to aid his work of conversion. Even if he should remove her from the neighborhood, he could not prevent these young enthusiasts from traveling after her. He therefore went to the superior of the convent on the island, and, when he returned, brought an invitation from her to Cornelia to take up her residence in the cloister, "as it was not proper for a young girl, with an equally young companion, to remain in a country inn with a party of gay young men."

Cornelia, who did not care where she lodged, easily allowed herself to be persuaded to fulfill Severinus's wish, and accept the friendly superior's offer. Her removal to the cloister took place immediately, and the astonished hostess told the artists, on their return from an excursion, that the beautiful Fraulein Erwing had just entered a convent. They were beside themselves at the news, for who could doubt that the poor victim of the black coat had been brought here to commence her novitiate? Thus Severinus's design of spreading a halo of inaccessibility around Cornelia, and cutting off any intrusive pursuit, was effectually attained; but that neither she nor her companion should betray the truth in their unavoidable walks, it was necessary that they should be taken away with all secrecy. On that very evening Severinus excited Cornelia's interest in the B---- Oberland to such a degree that she herself expressed a wish to continue her journey as soon as possible, and he was merely fulfilling her own desire when he proposed that they should leave the Island at daybreak, not to return. As no one saw or heard anything of this departure, Cornelia was, and remained, in the convent, whose strict seclusion made any inquiries impossible, and the young artists grieved deeply that the world was robbed of so much beauty.

Meantime Severinus took the supposed victim farther and farther away, and several months pa.s.sed so quickly in the constant change from one beautiful scene to another, and in grave but intellectually exciting conversation with Severinus, that she was not conscious how skillfully he managed to cut her off from all society. Priests and nuns were the only persons with whom she held occasional intercourse; and she pa.s.sed them by with friendly indifference, which rendered any advances impossible. Severinus's hopes of a conversion drooped more and more; he could not conceal from himself that a sorrow was gnawing at his soul which exhausted his best powers, and felt, with increasing despair, that he should succ.u.mb himself before he could conquer Cornelia's resolute temper.

XXIII.

BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH.

Severinus entered Cornelia's room one evening when they were to spend the night in a peasant's house in the B---- forest. She was standing at the window, gazing out into the sultry night. The sky arched over the earth like a leaden-hued canopy; not a breath of air was stirring, not a leaf moved on the trees; here and there a star gleamed forth where the dense ma.s.ses of clouds parted for a moment, and now and then a distant flash of lightning glittered in the horizon, revealing the dim outlines of the forest-crowned heights. "Severinus," she said, drawing a long breath, as she turned toward him, "let us go out into the open air before the storm breaks: the air is so oppressive here; perhaps it is cooler outside."

"I have come to speak to you about very serious subjects: it will be better for us to stay here," said Severinus. And now for the first time Cornelia noticed his gloomy expression, and looked with anxious expectation into his face.

"Cornelia, the time when your fate must be decided has arrived. The day of election is approaching. I must not allow Ottmar to move forward unrestrained upon the road in which he can only bring ruin upon our church. If he is elected to the parliament, a powerful enemy will arise against us. I have already told you what papers the order has in its hands: they must be used now, if they are not to become useless. Let Ottmar be a deputy; let him speak, and--as is to be foreseen--win the ma.s.ses, and everything we undertake against him will be in vain. The last point of time is reached, when I must decide what is to be done."

"And that is a publication of his relations with Jesuitism, the destruction of the toilsomely obtained confidence of his party, in order to prevent his election. Am I not right?"

"Certainly."

"And do you not know that you will not convert a man like Ottmar by such means, but simply render him miserable?"

"We wish to make him harmless,--nothing more."

"But you do far worse," cried Cornelia, indignantly. "You bar the path upon which he might become a better man; hurt him back to the cheerless void of a life without a purpose: perhaps even entangle him in fresh snares of falsehood and hypocrisy; and thus destroy a nature which, in its own way, might accomplish great things for the world. Who gives you the right thus violently to interfere with an independent existence?"

"The same right which the government has to punish secular crimes, we, as the representatives of the kingdom of G.o.d, possess against him who sins against G.o.d and his servants."

"Severinus, when the government chastises, it represents the insulted law, and uses honest means; but you avenge only your own boundless pride, and your weapons are hypocrisy and deceit! Are you better than he whom you punish?"

"Cornelia!" cried Severinus, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, "do you dare say that to me?"

"I have never spoken anything but the truth all my life. You could not expect me to call wrong right; and if G.o.d should descend to the earth once more he would judge the zeal of those who commit sin for his honor, and misuse his name for selfish purposes, far more harshly than the errors of the men who have deserted him in form, but not in reality."

"It is only natural that the child of the world should speak in her lover's favor; and I will be patient now, as I have often been before.

I cannot ask you to perceive the sublimity of a subordination to the will of a chief, as our order practices it. Our General alone bears the responsibility; G.o.d will call him only to an account; and he can lay it aside: for G.o.d is higher than the law, and whoever represents him on earth cannot have his acts measured by the standard of earthly justice!"

Cornelia gazed at Severinus long and silently. "You told me a short time ago that you pitied me. Now I must answer you in the same words: Severinus, I pity you! I am not angry; but you will perceive that from this hour our paths must lie apart. If you deal a blow which will destroy Ottmar's honest efforts, it is my duty to be at his side."

"Cornelia, it is in your power to avert this dangerous blow."

"How?"

"The order has determined to give up the papers to you at the price of your conversion to Catholicism. The order feels itself justified in resigning the pursuit of this faithless man; if it can thereby win for the good cause another soul, which will be pleasing to G.o.d."

"Indeed!" cried Cornelia, fixing a piercing glance upon Severinus. "Is it thus you advance your work of conversion?"

"We leave you the choice between the only church which can save souls and your lover's prosperity, or his destruction and our hostility. Can you hesitate?"

Cornelia stood before him with n.o.ble dignity. "And do you believe you can win me over to a religion which sanctions such means? Do you think to bribe me by any advantage--even the welfare of the man I love--to deny that which is highest and most sacred to me: the knowledge of the truth? No, Severinus; I feel I possess the power to make the man of my heart happy without being compelled to save him from your persecution by abjuring my own faith!"

"May you not trust to yourself too much? He whom we wish to ruin is not so easily saved by any one, even the bold spirit of Cornelia Erwing!"

"Severinus, you frighten me! I never saw you in this mood before. I feel as if in my sleep I had wandered into a tiger's den, and on awakening found myself shut up alone with the terrible enemy!" She paused and looked at Severinus; then growing calmer, shook her head: "No, no, Severinus; that is a bad comparison; forgive me for it! Those pure eyes give the lie to your threats; the dignity enthroned upon your brow cannot suffer you to become the tool of a base revenge."

"Cornelia, you will never learn to understand the nature of Jesuitism.

I am no blind tool who mechanically performs what is imposed upon him, but a living part of the whole, who abhors what injures the order, and labors for its advantage. Our obedience is no mere form which we can outwardly satisfy without real sympathy: it is an allegiance in spirit and in truth, which makes the will it serves its own. Thus I hate Ottmar, since he became faithless to his obligations towards us, as the order hates him, and will destroy him as the order commands, if you do not comply with the condition upon which we will spare him."