Through Night to Light Part 43

The arrow flew from the bow into Mademoiselle Marguerite's lap. But Amor did not wait for the results of his heroic deed; he turned his back, adorned with the goose wings, and hurried out, followed by the loud laughter of the company.

"What is on the paper, Marguerite?"

"You must let us see the paper, mademoiselle!"

"Of course!" cried Sophie, Franz, and the privy councillor, who was highly amused by Bemperlein's unexpected dramatic farce. But Marguerite had hardly cast a glance at the paper, than her expressive face was covered with deep blushes. She tore off the paper hurriedly and threw it into the fire-place. But Sophie, who had antic.i.p.ated this, pushed the paper aside before the flames could seize it, s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and called out, "I have it! I have it!" Marguerite wanted to take the precious doc.u.ment from her, but Sophie ran away with it. Marguerite followed her, while Franz and the privy councillor laughed heartily at the efforts of the little Lacerta to reach up to the raised arm of Sophie, who was head and shoulders higher. In their haste the young ladies rushed at the door just as Bemperlein, who had in the meantime laid aside his Olympian attributes, was coming back, and thus it happened that Marguerite, unable to check her rapid course, ran right into his arms.

"Behold the sacred power of the G.o.d!" exclaimed Sophie, as she saw this, exulting. "Here, Marguerite, is your paper. I do not care to see now what was written on the prescription, since I have seen the effect."

With these words she made a deep courtesy and handed Marguerite the paper, who hid it hurriedly in her bosom.

"That was well done, Bemperly," said the young lady in her exuberance of merriment. "I must embrace you for it."

Hereupon she seized the blus.h.i.+ng G.o.d of love by the shoulders and gave him a hearty kiss on the brow.

"I call you to be my witness, privy councillor," said Bemperlein, "that the ladies are fighting who is to have me, without my making the slightest advances, and that if Franz challenges me, I am not bound to give him satisfaction."

Bemperlein had brought new spirit into the company, and henceforth laughter and merriment were the order of the day. The good humor of the circle rose in proportion as the level sank in the punch-bowl. Only Marguerite was more quiet than before; but the joke had been carried quite far enough, and they did not tease her any more; they pretended even not to notice her, when she left her seat near the fire-place and began to walk up and down in the room, evidently buried in thought.

Franz, Sophie, and the privy councillor were soon engaged in weighty family matters, and did not observe, therefore, that Bemperlein also had risen quietly, and joining Marguerite, had commenced a conversation in a low tone with her, which soon became so interesting that they had to adjourn to the deep bay-window, where the broad folds of a heavy curtain protected them safely against the glances of the company.

Unfortunately, however, the stuff of which the curtains were made was not thick enough to break all the sound-waves completely, and thus it happened that after the lapse of perhaps five minutes those near the fire were suddenly startled by a noise which came from the window, and evidently arose from the sudden parting of the lips of two people, after they had rested upon each other for some time.

The origin of this very remarkable sound was the following:

The happy couple had--quite accidentally--wandered off into the bay-window; Mademoiselle Marguerite had at once desired to turn back again, but Bemperlein, bold as a lion, had seized her hand and said most impressively:

"Have you read what was on the paper?"

Marguerite had read it, of course, but she would not have been a little Lacerta if she had not answered the direct question by saying: "_Non monsieur!_"

"May I then tell you what it was?"

The little Lacerta began thereupon to tremble a little, not daring to say yes or no; Mr. Anastasius Bemperlein, however, interpreting her silence and her trembling in his favor, placed his arm around the slender waist of the little Lacerta, and whispered: "_Mademoiselle Marguerite Martin, je vous aime de tout mon coeur?_"

As she only trembled the more after this loyal declaration, and yet did not make any effort to escape from the arms of her knight, he said in a still lower and more impressive voice:

"Marguerite! do answer! Do you love me? Yes, or no?"

As Marguerite had answered this question with a very faint "_Oui!_"

there was nothing left to do, for a man so perfectly at home in love affairs as Mr. Anastasius Bemperlein was, but to hold the lady more firmly in his arms and to press a loud sounding kiss upon her unresisting lips.

And this kiss was the noise which suddenly started the company at the fire-place. They looked at each other in silence. The privy councillor smiled; but Franz and Sophie, who had not quite so much self-control, broke out into loud laughter.

"Oh, _mon Dieu!_" exclaimed the little Lacerta, slipping, full of terror, out of the arms of her knight.

"Be quiet!" replied the knight. "They must learn it anyhow," said he, and seized the little lady by the hand, drew back the curtain, stepped, like the page in Schiller's Diver, "bold and brave" before his friends, and spoke:

"My friends, I have the inexpressible pleasure of presenting to you my dear betrothed, Miss Marguerite Martin!"

As Bemperlein had initiated Sophie, under the seal of secrecy, into his secret, and as the latter had communicated it under the same seal to Franz, and to her father, n.o.body could exactly be said to be much surprised, especially after the scene with Amor and the kiss in the bay-window. For all that the congratulations were none the less hearty.

The men shook hands cordially, Sophie kissed Marguerite with more feeling than she usually showed, and it was some time before the stirred-up waves of deep emotion subsided again and left the surface once more calm and clear.

"We must authenticate such an event by a corresponding solemnity," said the privy councillor, who rang the bell, and ordered the servant who came in to bring up the last of twelve bottles of "Johannisberg Cabinet," which a sovereign once had presented to him after having been saved by the skill of the physician. And when the n.o.ble wine was sparkling in the gla.s.ses, he said:

"My dear ones! In the hour of joy we can easily speak of past sorrow, and, therefore, I propose to place the merry, pretty picture before us in a dark frame, which will make its bright colors appear all the more beautiful. While I was lying these last days helpless on my sickbed--I, whose office and duty it is to help wherever I can help--a word has constantly come back to me, a plaintive, tearful word, which once the poor Roman plebeians, overwhelmed with hard service, cried out before the patricians: '_Sine missione nascimur!_'--that means, you girls, 'We are born to have no leave of absence!' You do not care whether our strength is used up in the endless wars which you carry on in the name of our country, but for your own good profit and advantage only; or whether our lands lie fallow and our wives and children are dying in misery. To arms! to arms! you call from year's end to year's end; and we have to serve from year's end to year's end: '_sine missione nascimur!_'"

The privy councillor drank from his gla.s.s and continued, with deeply-moved voice:

"We also, we--the children of this nineteenth century--are born to have no leave of absence. The enormous tasks given us in science, in politics, in every department of human activity, claim from childhood up all our powers and consume them entirely. To arms! to arms! This is the unceasing cry which summons us also, whether our arms are the pen or the brush, the plough or the hammer, the compa.s.s or the lancet.

And work--inexorable, imperious work--what does it care for the workman?--whether his temples are beating with fever, whether his brain is overwrought to insanity, or his limbs are trembling from exhaustion--work does not mind it. It rewards him with poverty, sickness, and suffering, and demands of the ill-treated, the oppressed, the labors of Hercules. Yes, my friends, we also are plebeians in the service of work as those Roman plebeians in the service of war, and we can complain with them and say, '_sine missione nascimur_."

"And yet, I asked myself, how is it possible that we, weaklings and degenerate offspring as we are, can accomplish deeds by the side of which those of Hercules and other heroes appear like the play of pigmies? That our time, so often reproached on account of the prevailing laxity and indifference, nevertheless is like a parturient mountain, which produces--not a ridiculous mouse, but snorting steam-engines, gigantic works of industry and triumphs of inventive genius of every kind? It is possible only by the complete change which has taken place in the relative position of men. Then, work and conflict were in the hands of a few heroes, while the ma.s.ses were following in idleness and laziness with loud cries. Now the individual, however great he may be, counts for little; the whole strength of our day lies in the ma.s.ses, which are pressing forward in close columns, slowly but irresistibly, in the path of progress. This is not yet clearly seen by many. Rulers, princes, and princes' servants, who have a dim apprehension of the matter, would like to bring back the olden times for the sake of their brutal selfishness and their frivolous vanity--the times when the individual was everything and the ma.s.ses nothing; but it is all in vain. The army of progress, endowed with the death-defying instinct of the migratory lemur, marches on in long, unnumbered lines, shoulder to shoulder, each man stepping in the footsteps of the man before him, and when here and there a vacant s.p.a.ce occurs the lines are closed up again in an instant.

"And this thought, my friends, which I tried to see clearly before my mind's eye, had something marvellously soothing for me. I thought, what does it matter whether you break down to-day or to-morrow? Behind you follows a younger and stronger soldier who will at once step over you, fill your place, and accomplish with the very arms which fall from your releasing grasp greater things than you could ever have done."

As he said these words, the privy councillor pressed his son-in-law's hand; but Sophie, who had long struggled with her tears, threw herself sobbing in her father's arms.

"No, no, my child," said her father, stroking her soft hair lovingly.

"You must not cry; I wanted to prove to you, and to you all, that we must not weep and wail, but rejoice at it, that we are invincible and immortal in others and through others. Yes, it is a beautiful and a true saying, which I read to-day in Freiligrath's Confession of Faith: 'On the tree of mankind blossom blooms by blossom.' I see all around me budding and blooming; a whole spring of mankind in miniature. How long will it be before these buds and blossoms will change into glorious flowers, and ripen to luscious fruit? Will I live to see it? I wish to do so, I hope so; but even if it should not be so--if I should not be permitted to see your children at my knee--well, then, you dear ones, sorrow must follow joy as joy follows sorrow; where blossom is to crowd upon blossom, there the dry wood must be cut out and thrown into the oven; and if we must part, we had better part, if not cheerfully, at least bravely."

While the privy councillor had been speaking, a dull sound of steps and the confused noise of suppressed voices had been heard before the windows in the street. Then all had been silent again; and as the privy councillor said his last words there arose suddenly, in the magnificent tones of an immense chorus of men's voices, gentle as the spring breezes, and yet mighty as a thunderstorm, the song:

"It is decreed in G.o.d's own council That thou must part From all that's dearest to the heart; Altho' in all this world the hardest is To human heart From those we love for e'er to part!"

Those in the room were startled as if a voice from on high were speaking to them. Sophie leaned sobbing on her father's breast; the eyes of the men were brimful of tears; Marguerite even, although she did not understand a word, was yet so excited that she pressed her handkerchief to her face and wept aloud.

Then all rose and went to the bay-window. Below, in the very wide street, and forming a large semicircle marked out by bright lamps, stood the singers--members of the Mechanics' Club, which the privy councillor had founded years ago, and whose president Franz had been during the last weeks. Further out an immense mult.i.tude, head to head--men and women, citizens, students, poor people--all pell-mell, silent, motionless, as in a church.

And higher rose the mighty sounds:

"But you must understand me right, When men do part, they say with might, Till we meet again!

Till we meet again!"

The music pa.s.sed away; the lamps were extinguished. Quietly as they had come the crowds went away. It was dark again in the street; but in the hearts of those who were standing up-stairs in the bay-window, holding each; other in close embrace, it was bright, like a sunny morning in May.

CHAPTER VIII.

The great woods of Berkow are leafless. Where formerly birds were singing in the green twilight, and beetles and midges humming drowsily there the cold autumnal winds are now whistling through the bare branches; and where dry leaves are yet hanging on old oak-trees, they no longer whisper to each other lovingly as in the beautiful summer time, but rustle weird and woefully. Only the evergreens look as if the season could do them no harm; but their fine foliage also is darker, and they look now, when all around is bare, blacker and more dismal than ever.

Rough autumn has blown through the thick yew-hedge and into the garden behind the castle, has swept the flowers from the whole parterre, and filled the trim walks with withered wet leaves. On the terrace, under the broad branching pine-tree, the favorite place of the mistress of the house, the little round table with the marble slab is still standing, because it is deeply rooted in the ground, but the green benches and chairs have been carried into the garden-house.

The open place before the house, which is divided off by a railing from the farm-buildings, looks melancholy. The shutters on this side of the house are almost always closed, and are only now and then opened by a wrinkled old hand, whereupon often, as just now for instance, the wrinkled old face that belongs to the hand, with its icy gray moustache, looks out for a few minutes to watch a wagon heavily laden with wood, which four powerful horses can hardly drag through the deep mud at the side entrance to the yard between two barns, where even in summer the pa.s.sage is often quite dangerous. The old man contracts his brows angrily as he sees the servant whip the horses furiously, amid calls and cries and curses. He grumbles something about 'infamous fellow' in his gray beard; but he no longer raises his voice to give vent to a powerful oath or so, as he used to do; for after all it is not the servant's fault, but the tenant's, who has not been prevailed upon these five years to mend the road. This tenant is every way a vessel of wrath for the old man. He keeps his cattle in bad order; he is cruel to his hands; in the third place he knows, according to the old man's notions, nothing of farming; and, finally, he has a red nose, and is always hoa.r.s.e, two peculiarities attributed to brandy, and equally disgusting to the old man's eyes and ears. And, above all, the terrible prospect of never losing sight of this man for the whole of his life (for his term has twenty years more to run, and the old man is not going to live so long); to have to drag him along, so to say, till his blessed end, like the abominable ball which the old man received in his leg on the battle-field of Waterloo, and which is still there to this hour--no, worse than this ball, for that only hurts in spring and in fall, and whenever the weather is not as it ought to be. But this rascal of a tenant--and the old man abandoned his thoughts to this unprofitable and inexhaustible subject, fixing his eyes all the while upon the bleaching bones of a buzzard which, he had shot many years ago, and which (as a solemn warning to all evil-doers in the air and on the ground) had been nailed to the barn-door, until the voice of a boy, who has just come from the garden and is looking around the yard, comes up to his ear: