Chapter I
Three or four hour's ride by rail from the scene of these incidents is situated the little Thuringian city where Edwin had become a teacher of mathematics and Franzelius had founded his printing office. The house for whose purchase Papa Feyertag had advanced his son-in-law a considerable sum, stood on the principal street, and the unpretending old front bore a striking resemblance to a proof sheet stained with printer's ink and scrawled over with various marks and dashes. Only the sign over the door, was new, and bore in white letters on a black ground the inscription: "Printing done by Reinhold Franzelius." It was an old one story frame buildings with, a tile roof blackened by age and as high as the house itself, and it contained, besides the work shop, a number of chambers for the journeymen, and store rooms for paper and other articles. On entering the house, the door to the left bore the sign "office," and to the right was the entrance to the composing room, from which a narrow passage led into the back building, where the presses were.
In the upper story, in a plainly furnished but spacious sitting room, sat two women, in whom we recognize the fair-haired Reginchen from Dorotheenstrasse, now Frau Franzelius, and the zaunkoenig's daughter, now Frau Doctor Edwin. The years that have elapsed have not passed over the heads of either without leaving their traces, but the changes show to the advantage of both. When we last saw Leah, she was lying on the green sofa in the family sitting room at the 'Venetian palace,' with haggard cheeks paled by hopeless passion, and we were only permitted to see how the expiring spark of her young existence was rekindled by the touch of love. Since that time her life has expanded into a quiet, soul-full beauty, which is not striking at the first glance, but soon shows the more thoughtful observer that there must be something unusual about the young wife. She still wears her hair as she did in the days other girlhood, wound in heavy braids about her head, and fastened behind with two silver pins, almost in the style of the peasant girls of Rome or Albano. The delicate, softly rounded oval face has grown fuller, and no longer wears a sickly pallor, but the complexion is still of alabaster whiteness, so that the eyes, which are her most beautiful feature, glow with a still darker lustre. It would be difficult to say what was most attractive in the countenance, the quick intelligence of the eyes, or the sweet gentleness expressed in the curves of the full lips. Even her figure has gained an added charm, although her matronly dignity makes it more perceptible than ever that the grand outlines of the head would have better suited a prouder figure. But when she is seated this is not noticeable, especially when she laughs, when the thoughtful eyes and kindly mouth harmonize so perfectly, that no one could desire any alteration in the young wife's appearance.
Reginchen, who sits beside her in a light flowered calico dress, with her fair hair brushed plainly under an almost coquettish little white cap, has also perceptibly gained in beauty and fullness of figure, nay her form, once as slender as a swallow's seems disposed to embonpoint. But the round, childish face, on the contrary, has elongated, the rapid merry upward glance of the blue eyes is changed for an expression of quiet cheerfulness, only sometimes darkened by a slight cloud, when the noise made by the two little black haired boys grows too loud, or one or both, in playing with a large brown rocking horse, stumbles over his brother's legs. These two little fellows, now just three years old, are the famous twins, Edwin and Balder, whom Reginchen gave her Reinhold in the first year of their marriage. They are, as Edwin has already told Marquard, ridiculously like their father, grave, black eyed, white-teethed little prodigies, with voices which really afford a most favorable augury for the future of the young tribunes of the people, who despite their turbulent, unruly conduct, are the kindest hearted little fellows in the world, and cling to their mother in particular with such wild, jealous tenderness, that when both fall upon her at once, Reginchen is in considerable danger of being strangled and suffocated by her own children. Totally unlike these comical miniature editions of their father, is the youngest child, a delicate, quiet, fair-haired little girl about a year old, still a nursling, and whose presence a blind man would scarcely notice. The father declared her Balder's living image, and racked his brains for a long time to try whether this child, whom he loves with special tenderness, could not be given some name which would likewise recall his never to be forgotten friend. But Reginchen, willingly as she indulges her Reinhold's every wish, had a decided objection to Baldriane or Waltharia, and insisted that this tender spring blossom should bear her grandmother's honest name, Friederike, to which, since Reginchen, as the true daughter of a shoemaker, and knows how to put down her little foot at times, he made no objection.
When Leah, as was her daily habit during Edwin's absence, came at twilight to see her friend and neighbor, the latter had just nursed the child and was holding it quietly in her lap, where it was falling asleep.
"Excuse me if I remain seated," she said in a low voice, though the two young bawlers, the twins, had no respect for their little sister's slumber. "Riekchen is just going to sleep; I can lay her in the cradle in a few minutes. I'm so glad you've come. We should have sent for you to-day at any rate. Father's here; he arrived unexpectedly without any other reason than because he couldn't live any longer without seeing the two boys. He scarcely looked at Riekchen--to be sure, it will be a long time," she continued with a low laugh, "before the dear child is old enough for the 'explosive effect' father's always talking about. He asked about you, too, and wanted to go at once to give you a message from your parents, but he began to talk to my Reinhold in the old strain about progress and the welfare of the people, and they didn't stop till it grew dark, and as it's Sunday evening Reinhold took him to the workmen's union. There, now she's asleep, now the pet can be put down. Have you shaken hands with Aunt Leah, boys? They look horribly. Their father brought home some chocolate cigars, and its no use to wash them. Will you keep quiet, you little good for nothings?"
Little Edwin, after hastily shaking hands with Leah, had climbed on the sofa, clasped both arms around his mother's neck, rumpled her cap, and pressed his curly black head against her's, playing all sorts of tricks and stammering loving words in his broken language. Balder was also endeavoring to climb up the other side of the sofa, so that the sleeping child opened her large blue eyes again and stared with a frightened gaze at the black kobold. Leah could not help laughing, and hastily went forward to take the sweet little thing in her arms. The maid-servant was called in to assist, and her powerful arms at last succeeded in pulling the wild twins away from their mother and out of the room.
"They'll kill me!" exclaimed Reginchen in comic despair, as Leah re-entered. "Reinhold might manage them, but he only laughs instead of helping me. And I, with the best intentions--but sit down, dearest, and let's talk to each other a little while. You can't imagine how much trouble it costs me to get a half hour to myself. How often I envy you your quiet house, and you have the whole day to read and write and think. I, with our great household, and the care of all the workmen, to whom I fill a mother's place--isn't it comical," she laughed, fastening her cap straight again, "to look at me and think what I used to be, and what I am now. It would be a sin to complain, but I'm sorry for one thing--that there's no chance of my husband's teaching me anything, as I am always begging him to do. But in the evening, when I have him an hour to myself and might read and learn something, my eyes close, and the finest poem or novel is not half as delightful as my bed. When I complain of this to Reinhold, he laughs at me. He thinks I'm well educated enough; he's still so much in love, that he doesn't see my deficiencies. But when I get to be an old woman and sit with my old husband, and can scarcely understand half the things he's thinking and writing--well, it will be his own fault, so he can't complain. I only speak of it, because it always gives me a pang when you find me so among the children--and I can't divide any of the blessing with you. But you see every joy has its thorns, even that which seems most enviable. You, as a compensation, live alone with your husband, and he tells you everything he thinks, and you two are so completely one all day long that you needn't desire anything else. Ain't I right, dearest?"
She had nestled close to her silent friend, who listened with a peculiar, almost triumphant smile. "You're a little hypocrite," she now said, taking Reginchen's face between her hands and pressing a hasty kiss upon her brow. "You know very well, how I feel beside you--and because you've a kind heart and love me, want to make me believe you'd sell your three children for the title of Doctor, you wicked mother. But just because you were only acting, and I, with all my culture, am not so skillful in hypocrisy as you--you cunning child of nature--come, let me whisper something in your ear, that no one has yet heard--not even he who has the best right to hear it--and you must also promise me that not a soul shall know it, not even he from whom you usually have no secrets. Your hand upon it, Ginchen!"
She held out her hand for her friend to clasp; but the wife and mother started up with a cry of joy, that vividly recalled the little house swallow of former days, exclaiming: "Is it true? Are you sure? Oh! dear, dearest Leah--" and she threw her arms around her neck in a tumult of the most enthusiastic delight; "let me kiss and hug and congratulate you, and no seven seals shall close my mouth, since I guessed it before you said a word, and besides how could I conceal it? Reinhold always says he reads my face better than a page printed in the clearest type, the tease! and now your father and mother--everything will be well again, and I take back every word I just said, merely to drive away your longing. No! without a child--all the learning of a whole library couldn't make me happy, or you either, dearest, and because I knew that, I've always half grudged myself my own happiness, and often--God forgive me the sin--thought whether it wouldn't be better, if we didn't live in the same city; that's all my wickedness, and now I'll keep still and you shall punish me soundly for my deceit, and then let me kiss you for the good news. Merciful Heavens, what will Edwin say!"
During this enthusiastic outburst of joy she had been dancing about the room like a crazy person, and now suddenly sat down in Leah's lap, threw her arms around her, and humbly bent her head, as if expecting the chastisement would be given in good earnest. Leah bent toward her. "You're a sweet child," she said, secretly drying her tearful eyes in Reginchen's hair. "Come, be sensible. And I'm entirely in earnest about keeping the matter a secret. Who knows whether I may not be disappointed? Have I not twice cherished the hope, only to be doubly unhappy? That's why Edwin must know nothing about it until I'm perfectly sure. Oh! darling, I'll never, never forget that you have rejoiced with me. It seems as if I had discovered to-day, for the first time, that you really love me, and what a precious treasure you are. The man would not deserve you at all, who would question of the books you had read or the subjects you were able to discuss."
They held each other in a close embrace, and then with all the unwearied energy of a woman's fancy, Reginchen began to picture the happy future Leah might now expect. But she insisted that she should be required to keep the secret from her Reinhold only so long as Edwin himself knew nothing of it. She asked when he would return. Since the arrival of the letter Edwin had written at the hotel, which was now four days old, Leah had not heard from him, and therefore concluded he would not remain much longer away. "This is the first time," said she, "that we've been separated so many days, and I know that if he didn't consider it necessary for his health, he wouldn't have stayed half so long."
"But it's strange he doesn't write oftener," said Reginchen. "When my Reinhold has to go to Leipsic on business, I get half a dozen letters from him. You must train your husband better. Besides writing's his trade."
"You don't know him, dearest. Precisely because he's in the habit of telling me everything, it's hard for him to communicate with me, even an hour every day, by his pen. He feels a sort of defiance against the separation. He won't learn to be satisfied with a little, and if he can't have all, prefers to get nothing."
"It may be so," replied her friend. "Besides, it always seems to me as if you two really didn't need to speak to each other at all, but exchanged your thoughts without the aid of words. But only let little Leah come, and she'll give you some entirely new thoughts. Reinhold's letters and mine contain nothing but anecdotes about the children; if any one else should read them, he would laugh at us. But we're perfectly serious."
Steps ascending the staircase interrupted these confidential outpourings. The father-in-law and son-in-law, who had returned from the workmen's meeting, entered, Franzelius exactly the same us in the old days, only thanks to his little wife, with hair somewhat more smoothly brushed and cravat more evenly tied, while the black eyes under the bushy brows beamed with a quiet, almost shy expression of love and happiness, which he owed to the same little wife also. Papa Feyertag, on the contrary, was scarcely recognizable. The once benevolent face, with its smile of superiority, had assumed a strangely eager, excited expression, which together with a half grown grey moustache rendered it by no means attractive. Instead of the neat, quiet dress which he was in the habit of wearing on Sundays in his shop, his short, thick set figure was clad in the fashionable garb of a tourist, a mustard colored shade of cloth, variegated with little points and dots from head to foot, and in addition a ridiculous little hat with a blue ribbon. He was heated, and seemed to break off an angry conversation with his son-in-law as he perceived the visitor. Reginchen cast a hasty glance at her husband, which the latter answered with a slight shrug of the shoulders, but when a lamp was brought in and the simple supper placed upon the table, the cheerful mood that usually reigned in the household soon returned, and even the old gentleman became more good natured. He told Leah that his wife, who had never been farther from Berlin than Potsdam or the Mueggelsee, had this time also obstinately refused to visit her daughter in her own house. She declared she could not eat anything that was not cooked in Berlin water, and during the one night she spent at Potsdam, she had been unable to close her eyes, because there were no good beds out of Berlin. "What's to be done, dear Frau Doctorin? Women are women. I tried to conquer her by rousing her jealousy, and threatened to persuade the Frau Professorin, I mean Madame Koenig, your step-mother, to come with me, as your father unfortunately cannot stir from home on account of his gout. She knows I think your mother a very beautiful lady, in spite of her forty-five years, and we're always joking together. But she also knew very well, that it was only a joke, for that young couple--your parents I mean--can't be so easily separated. They gave me the kindest messages for you, and asked why you didn't come to Berlin. After all, you owe it to your parents to do so, and you might be so comfortable in their new house."
"A teacher of mathematics, who has learned how to calculate and has opportunities in abundance for doing so, doesn't find it as easy to travel, as a house-owner in the capital," replied Leah with a faint blush. "Besides Edwin needs his vacations to regain his strength, and Berlin, as he always says, is a great human mill, where one is ground to powder in a fortnight."
"Why, he lived there more than fourteen years, and was always well," said the old man. "'But every one to his taste.'" He, for instance, could not endure to stay six months in such a little place as this town, where his children lived. He should feel like a great pike that had wandered into stagnant water and could not find its way back to the flowing river again. "The future, dear Frau Doctorin," he continued, "belongs to the great cities; smaller ones are dying out. I shall not live to see the day--but you and my children may perhaps do so, at any rate the little ones sleeping yonder--when Germany will have no cities nearer to each other than fifty miles; but then to be sure each will be a city indeed, containing at least eight hundred thousand inhabitants, without counting the suburbs. The culture which the present time demands of men, is not possible to be attained without great means and the arts and sciences can be properly fostered only in the great centres of commerce. I heard a lecture delivered before our society," he continued, "which will soon appear in print. I will send you a copy as soon as it is published."
"And where's the bread and meat for the great cities to come from, dear father?" asked Franzelius, who had been silently listening, and meantime making great havoc in these two articles, which his wife had set before him.
"That's the business of the railroads," replied the shoemaker, without the slightest embarrassment. "The country people, or rather the members of the great rural industrial societies, will go out every morning through the open country, till the fields, attend to the cattle, and return by rail in the evening to the city, which they'll reach in time to witness William Tell or hear Lucca. Why should these worthy people be forever excluded from all education and culture, merely because hitherto no theatres, concerts, and universities have existed in the villages?"
"They'll have to stay in the country over night very often during the haying season," Franzelius dryly remarked.
The old man cast a side glance at him, to see if he were in jest or earnest, but no satirical lines were to be discovered in his son-in-law's open, honest face. Nevertheless the old apostle of progress, evidently irritated, relapsed into silence, and it was long ere Leah could succeed in restoring him to his former cheerful mood. She told him of Heinrich Mohr's happy marriage and fatherly pride, and asked about Reginchen's brother, who was also married and had obtained an excellent position in Russia, as engineer of a new railroad. At intervals her eyes sometimes met those of the little fair-haired wife, twinkling merrily with joy over the secret so recently disclosed, as if they wanted to ask: "what's all this chatter to the great news we both know of?"
When the clock struck nine, in spite of Reginchen's remonstrances, Leah prepared for her departure. She knew that the members of the household retired early and rose betimes. When she was about to shake hands with Herr Feyertag also, he declared he would not be refused the pleasure of escorting her home. "It's only around the corner," said Leah, "and this is such a small town, that the streets are perfectly safe at night without masculine protection." But the old man would not be denied. He seized his little hat with the blue ribbon, patted his daughter on the back, and shook hands with his son-in-law somewhat formally. They need not wait up for him, he said. He could not retire so early, and would stroll about in search of adventure.
When they found themselves in the street and about twenty paces from the house, the singular man suddenly stopped short and said to his companion:
"You've probably perceived, Frau Doctorin, that I have something on my mind. Do you know the real object of my coming here? It was not, as my daughter thinks, on account of the two black haired boys, though I love the little fellows well enough to eat them, but because of a dream. You see, a short time ago, I came home rather late from one of our meetings, where there had been some very good speeches, and fretted before I fell asleep, because I was always obliged to hold my tongue, since, as my friend the assessor says, I've taken rather a passive than an active part in education. 'Well,' I thought, 'every one has not the gift of being a great orator, and he who makes comfortable boots for people does his share toward healthful progress.' Just then I fell asleep, and just imagine what I dreamed. I was standing out of doors on the parade ground, and suddenly I saw something dark coming toward me, moving in regular rank and file, and making a great deal of dust; but the columns were very low, not more than two feet above the ground. As it drew nearer, what did I see? Nothing but boots and shoes, regularly divided into regiments, like an army, according to the various styles; jackboots, dancing shoes, slippers, spatter-dashes, in short everything that has ever been manufactured in a shoe-maker's shop, and in fact, as I instantly recognized by the shape and workmanship, in my own. Now I knew at once, without being told by any one, that these were the boots and shoes which had passed through my hands since the time I was apprenticed; the collected work, so to speak, of my life. 'Now,' a voice seemed to say, 'you can see what you've accomplished in this world, and whether you've any right to imagine you've been of any special aid to progress.' I tell you, Frau Doctorin, it was horrible to see how the little black army, exactly like the roaches and beetles on a kitchen hearth, thronged past me into the Thiergarten and through the Brandenbourg-Gate--mere feet without any bodies--and I stood there like a beaten cur, covering my face with my hands, and at last, in spite of my horror, unable to keep from laughing aloud which awoke me.
"When I told the dream to my wife, she only said in her quiet way: 'Now you see what comes of your stupid fancies, Feyertag. The vision means nothing but: "Cobbler stick to your last!"' I made no reply, I know how limited her views are, and women are women. But I've made a firm resolution to have nothing more to do with shoe-making. The rest of my life I will devote to higher purposes, caring for the head instead of the feet, helping those whom people try to stretch on the same last till they get moral corns--I mean grow stupid--and to getting the air, which is called freedom of thought. I instantly said to myself: 'your son-in-law is just the right man to aid you. You must get him, and then set off on a journey; he has the tongue, you the money, like Moses and Aaron, and then you can visit the various workmen's societies and every-where provide for true culture and enlightenment.' But would you believe that the man, who formerly made such fine speeches, and wrote articles on every conceivable subject, can't be induced to move in the matter. When I explained my plan to him to-day, he looked at me very quietly, and only said: 'That's all very fine, father, but I can't help you; my business will not permit me to go wandering about the world.' And in the evening he took me to a workman's society he has established here, where every thing was quiet and orderly, it must be admitted, but where there was no display of rhetoric at all. Reinhold had brought a book written by a certain Buckle, about civilization and the history of the world and such things. But it was terribly prosy and circumstantial, there was not a trace of vital questions, points of view, and humane learning, and much of it was incomprehensible to me, so that I wondered they all listened so quietly, as if to a sermon. When the reading was over, I thought: 'Surely Feyertag, you ought to open the horizon of the capital to these provincial people, and I began very fluently to make a speech; for my friend, the assessor, had said something like it day before yesterday, and I've long been familiar with rhetorical tricks and practice them every day before my apprentices in the work-shop. I only lacked courage in Berlin. But do you suppose it made any impression on these country block-heads? Neither the absolute and the ablative nor realism had the slightest effect--I might as well have talked to the walls! Of course, in such stagnant water, people have no idea what the stream of the spirit of the age, and purpose, and representation, and the French Revolution, and self-government--you know what I mean, Frau Doctorin. But these narrow minds! When I concluded and asked whether any one wished to discuss the matter, only one man rose; he said he had not understood me, I must explain what I meant more clearly. But Reinhold looked at his watch and said it was too late for this evening; they could return to the subject at the next meeting. But I clearly saw that he only wanted to prevent me from interfering with his Buckle's civilization, and therefore closed the meeting. He has grown narrow-minded, Frau Doctorin, his wife and children and his business--everything else is a matter of indifference to him. He didn't tell me as plainly as my old wife did, but it amounted to the same thing--I'd better stick to my last."
"It's your own fault, Herr Feyertag," replied Leah smiling, while the old man took a pinch of snuff from his little box. "Why did you make our friend so happy, by giving him the most charming wife in the world, so that he's now far too well satisfied with his own little family circle, to think of roaming about the world. Stay a few weeks here and see how he provides, not only for himself, but for all who share his labor, and you'll surely no longer be angry with him because he wants to stick to his last."
Herr Feyertag's only reply was a shake of the head. Meantime they had reached Leah's home, a low one story house in a side street, where there was not even a light burning. The maid-servant had heard them coming, and appeared at the door with a little lamp.
"When will your husband come back?" asked the old man sighing. "He, I hope, will understand me, and make the matter clear to Reinhold, too."
"I'm expecting him very soon. But you must come and see me to-morrow at any rate, and we'll discuss this subject farther. Believe me, dear Herr Feyertag, you'll not accomplish much with Edwin either. We're so happy in our narrow sphere, and he in particular, feels that without moving from this place, he can influence the whole world--I doubt very much whether he'll approve or support your plan. However--I won't prejudice him though. Good night."
She cordially shook hands with him, and then entered the house, while the disappointed shoemaker, drawing the hat with the blue ribbon low over his brow, walked back muttering and gesticulating to the main street, to find at some ale house more appreciative souls.
Chapter II
The ground floor of the house where Edwin and Leah had lived four years, was arranged in the simplest manner; three little rooms and a chamber for the maid-servant, or, as Edwin said, no longer one tun but three small ones and a band-box. The room looking out upon the street, however, had two large windows; one was occupied by Edwin's desk, the other by the artist's table from the Venetian palace. The old furniture had also been brought to the little town, the book-case with the two busts, the green sofa on which Leah had rested when she gave Edwin her hand, over it the two engravings of Raphael's pictures, which had hung above the brothers' beds, and close by, on a pedestal, a cast of the bust of Leah's mother. The only new thing was a harmonium, a bridal present from Frau Valentin, who knew how Edwin loved music. As he cared less for master pieces and their perfect execution, than for the elementary magic of harmony, Leah's art was sufficient to conjure this spell from the full toned instrument.
The other art, of which she was mistress, she had eagerly cultivated. She had no lack of time, she said with a sorrowful smile. Edwin, even during his most arduous mental labor, liked to have her in the same room, quietly occupied with her painting, often for hours exchanging only a glance; or he stood behind her chair, looked silently at her work and gently smoothed her dark hair, as he used to stroke Balder's fair mane. Then she would glance smilingly up into his face, until he bent over her and kissed her lips. He said her presence helped him to think. Certain subtle psychological revelations would never have come to him, but for this quiet enlarging and supplementing of his nature through his other self. Frequently he was not even conscious of her presence in any other way than as his right hand while writing was aware that the left rested upon the paper. And yet the sheet would often become displaced, if both hands did not share in the work.
As she now returned to the cosy room, and after sending the maid-servant to-bed, sat down in her "inspiration corner," as Edwin called one end of the sofa (the little lamp burned brightly on the table before her, illuminating the profile of Demosthenes on the bookcase, the writing desk so long without a master, and all the other witnesses of their bright young happiness) for the first time she was overpowered by the consciousness that many things would soon be changed, that when the young life under her heart looked forth into the world with two bright eyes and gave utterance to its joys and sorrows, this room, where silent thoughts and lovely flowers peacefully unfolded side by side, could no longer be her one and all. She thought of the words with which Edwin had tried to console his childless wife, how he had said that two people in their situation lived in a state of perpetual betrothal, and that any third person, even were it their own child, at first came between them like a stranger. "No," she said to herself, "it's a part of ourselves too, it's only like a mirror, wherein we see both our faces melted into one. Besides, he didn't mean it seriously, it was only before he knew--"
She now became absorbed in thinking how everything would be, how she would manage to always remain near Edwin, without disturbing him by the little sprawling screaming creature, and whenever she thought with secret terror of the two unruly black haired twins, from whom no corner of her friend's large house was secure, she consoled herself with the memory of quiet, fair-haired little Riekchen, beside whom one might solve the most difficult mathematical problems undisturbed. It would have fair hair, she thought, smiling in blissful anticipation, it must resemble Edwin feature for feature, possess the same beautiful blue eyes, the same grave brow. Now her thoughts wandered from the little stranger to him whom she knew as well, nay better than herself, and as with all the powers of her soul she conjured up his image to the smallest detail, a passionate longing suddenly overpowered her, a painful sense of loneliness, mingled with such an enthusiastic admiration of the beloved, that she started up and paced to and fro in a sort of ecstacy, connecting his name with loving, tender words, such as she had never addressed to him in person. She suddenly thought it a sin that when he was with her, she had maintained such a strange reserve, and never allowed herself to frankly show him the inmost depths of her heart. "He doesn't know how I idolize him," she said to herself. "I know it very well, I knew it from the beginning, but I'm always afraid of myself--and of him too. His love did not exist like mine, from the first hour of our meeting, it has grown by degrees, perhaps I should have startled him, if I had shown how the flames were blazing in my soul. But it's wrong, he shall know of it when he comes back. There's always too much philosophy between us--love is folly--happy nonsense--laughing and weeping without sense or reason. That's the way I've always loved him, to the disappearance and forgetfulness of all reason, and he--he began differently, my few good traits, my little share of cleverness attracted him. It was enough at that time--he gave me what he had, and in my utter poverty it was an untold treasure. But when he comes back, then he shall see what a foolishly happy, loving wife he has in me--my beloved husband, my one and all, my Lord and my God, my life and my world--"
Thus her rapturous longing found utterance in low confused murmurs, while she wandered about the room, now taking in her hand the pen with which he had written, and then with a caressing gesture stroking the book that still lay open on his desk. Her temples throbbed feverishly, she opened a window and leaned out into the dark street, where every thing was asleep, except a kitten gliding over the stone door sill.
But who was approaching from the main street? Two men walking arm in arm, and carrying canes and traveling satchels? And now she distinctly heard the words: "You see, my boy, your little wife has not yet gone to rest--mock widows never retire early--you've horrible pavements, and the gas apparently relies upon receiving a little voluntary assistance from the light of cigars. Is it much farther?"
"Heinrich," replied another voice, which thrilled the heart of the listener at the window, "it would be better for us to go back and I'll spend the night with you at the hotel. It's so late--so unexpected--I know her--she won't close her eyes all night--and I--I am so utterly exhausted--"
"Edwin!" cried a joyous voice from the only lighted window in the dark street. The pedestrian involuntarily paused and grasped his friend's arm with a convulsive pressure. "She's awake," he said hastily in an undertone, "she has heard us, so it can't be helped! Not a word this evening, do you hear? Poor darling, it will come soon enough; is that you, Leah?" he now exclaimed, suddenly quickening his pace. "There, child, now you see what you've done with your promised surprise. I wanted to be generous, too, and as I could think of nothing else, decided that the best surprise would be myself. Good Evening, dearest!" and he took both hands, which she extended to him through the window, and pressed them in his cold trembling fingers; "I thank God for being here, where I belong! I have the honor of presenting to you an old acquaintance, Herr Heinrich Mohr, the father of his son, of whom I've already written to you. I couldn't induce him to satisfy himself with an improvised couch on the green sofa. He thinks he can find a bed at the Star, on which he can more comfortably stretch his six feet of length. Is all well, dearest? but come, open the door for us. We must at least have a glass of wine together--"
He had released her hands, but she did not move from the window. These shallow jesting words had fallen on her soul like a frost and had paralysed her. She did not speak; she addressed no word of welcome to the old friend, asked no question as to how her beloved husband had fared. This, then, was the meeting for which she had waited with such ardent longing.
"Don't be afraid, Frau Leah, that I shall make use of this thoughtless invitation and trouble you this, evening," said Mohr laughing. "Old friends are the most inconvenient articles in the world, when married people meet after a separation. To-morrow I'll take the liberty of knocking at your door to give you my wife's message and a photograph of the little Mohr, but now I shall wish you a good night's rest. No, my dear fellow, I need no guide. I looked carefully at your 'Star' as we passed by, and shall find it again in spite of my small share of astronomical knowledge. Good night, Frau Doctorin."
He raised his hat, pressed Edwin's hand, and walked back toward the main street.
Edwin still stood under the window.
"It seems like a dream to be at home again," said he. "This whole day, while we were marching like two lunatics, merely to get here, I have been constantly thinking of our old home, and how delightful it would be to clasp your hand again, and now I'm standing here, and the old stones are still firm, and I--but you're so silent; the surprise was too sudden; well, I hope yours--"
"I'll open the door for you," she said, making a mighty effort to repress her tears. "Oh! Edwin, is it really you?"
She left the window and took up the little lamp from the table; but suddenly replaced it again. Why should she let him read her feelings in her face? So she went through the dark entry, opened the door, and felt herself clasped in his arms; but passionate as was his embrace, she noticed that he did not seek to press his lips against hers, but rested his forehead on her shoulder, repeating her name over and over again.
"I'm with you once more, my dearest, we have each other again. It seems as if we'd been parted for years--Leah, my faithful darling--"
"Come into the room," she murmured. "You're exhausted, and your forehead is wet with perspiration. Why did you hurry so recklessly?"
"Yes, yea, scold me, dear Wisdom. It's hard to keep within bounds. But I'm here again, all is well now. What's the matter?" he continued, as he entered the room and saw how his pale face, now fully revealed by the lamp-light, startled her. "I'm perfectly well--that is, I have suffered a few days from a nervous attack, similar to my old ones, but the famous household medicine--so-called because it can only be used out of the house--air and exercise,--has done wonders. And now--I'm as delighted as a child to see the green sofa again,--all our furniture; it can hardly be called princely, we must admit, but it's pretty, very pretty; and my dear little wife--I'll wager you have painted a whole table service while I was away, and the famous surprise is that the roses on your cheeks have been transplanted to the china. Well, I repeat again as I see--"
While uttering these hasty words he had sunk down on the sofa and closed his eyes, evidently in the greatest exhaustion. A strange smile, that cut her to the heart, rested on his lips. When he again looked up, she was kneeling beside him, clasping his hands and gazing with an expression of the most loving anxiety into his face, to seek for some consoling glance that would explain all this as only the consequences of over fatigue.
"Dear wife," said he, "if you could give me a mouthful to eat, or no, only a sip of the Spanish wine mamma sent us--and then--then we'll go to rest."
She instantly started up and hurried out of the room, soon returning bringing with her wine, bread and cold meat. Edwin nodded smilingly. "Little housewife!" he exclaimed, drawing her down beside him on the sofa. But he only touched her forehead with his lips, and did not appear to notice the glass of wine she poured out for him. "I'm so happy, so happy!" he repeated again and again. "I drink to peace and rest and--love!"
He tried to draw her toward him, but with a feeling of secret horror she gently repelled him. "Edwin," said she, "what has happened? You can't deceive me for I knew it at the first word you uttered, though you strove to conceal it; you've experienced something that has greatly excited, agitated, or saddened you. Won't you tell me about it? We've always told each other everything."
"Yes, indeed, dearest," he said with a weary nod, while he gently patted her on the cheek. "You're my strong-hearted little girl, my trusty comrade, my dear left hand, that always knows what the right hand is doing. But it's late, my eyes are closing with sleep and there will be plenty of time to-morrow--to-morrow, and the day after, and during our whole lives. What have I experienced? Nothing dangerous. We've passed through a storm, the thunderbolt struck close beside us, and we have been drenched to the skin, that's all. The warmth here will soon dry us again. Come, dearest. What says old Catullus?
"Oh! how pleasant it is from all care to part! Heavily all burdens fall away from the heart, As weary of life's toils we return to our home, Reposing there restfully, no more to roam."
"Do you want to sit up any longer, child?"
While repeating the verse, he had risen from the sofa with evident effort and approached the door of the bed room. There, leaning against it, he looked back at her. "Good Heavens, you're weeping!" he exclaimed, suddenly shaking off all fatigue. "What in the world is the matter?"
"Oh! Edwin," she said, gently repelling his passionate embrace, "forgive me, it's wrong. I ought not to be so childish. But my feelings overpowered me. Sleep! How can I think of sleeping, when I see you return so changed, with a burden on your heart which, for the first time, I'm not allowed to share! And yet this is wrong, you're so tired and ought above all to find rest here, and not a weeping wife. To-morrow--will you not? to-morrow, when you've slept--"
"No, not to-morrow!" he murmured bending over her and stroking her hair caressingly with both hands. "This very day, dearest, though it should cost us all sleep. This was the object for which I longed, the reason I could not wait, and walked without ceasing ten miles in six hours. And now I am here, I'm so cowardly that I want to sneak off to bed, instead of first confessing everything to my brave other self and begging absolution! Come, let me sit down beside you again; and be comforted, you see it has not cost me my life, I am here, holding your dear hands, and I feel more deeply than ever before, that we two are one, and that no power of Heaven or Hell can separate us."
He now sat down beside her and began to quietly relate everything that had occurred, from the time he finished his letter to her and Marquard entered his room, till he met Mohr in the forest, where after the long superhuman strain of all the powers of his soul and senses, he had lost consciousness for a moment. Nothing was concealed or palliated. It was evidently a relief to recall to mind all his tortures, his weaknesses, and his honest struggle, now that he knew himself to be safe, where the friends who had followed at his heels could not pursue him into the sacred abode of his peace. The longer he spoke, the calmer became his voice, the clearer his glance. "It is over," he concluded, pressing her hand to his cheek. "I hope you'll praise me, dearest, for having done so well. To be sure, I've not the strong nerves essential to rude courage, and when I do anything heroic, feel long afterwards by the miserable trembling of my heart, what the exertion of moral courage has cost me. But be calm, child, this was the last attack. It will haunt me for a time; if you had seen her--even without being affected as I was by the old fate that binds me to this mysterious creature--you could not have helped feeling the deepest compassion. What a life is before her with nothing but the vague hope of some change that may release her and give her some reason for loving existence! My beloved reason, that helps me over unsolved questions, that sits incarnate beside me, and that all my future care--"
"You've not yet shown me her letter," she interrupted in an expressionless tone. They were the first words she had spoken for half an hour.
"The letter, child? Why do you wish to read it? It's as incoherent a collection of sentences as was ever scrawled by a poor tortured soul. I assure you I've not read it a second time myself."
"If I'm to know her thoroughly, to feel any real compassion for her, I must read it, Edwin. Give it to me. You see I am calm. I have told myself often enough, that this must come some day. It's a misfortune, like any other, only far more sad than every day sorrow. But with honest purpose, and--time--"
"Oh! child," he exclaimed, drawing her tenderly toward him, "have patience with me, leave it to time, do not doubt my honest purpose. I was sure of it--one hour with you, and the enchantment would be powerless, the magic spell shamed by your dear presence. I thank you for having insisted upon knowing everything to-day. Now for the first time I can hope to sleep. The last two nights, in spite of Heinrich's company and all the fatigues of traveling, I could not obtain anything worthy of the name of repose. I had dreams which I should pity a condemned man for having. Now if I can hold your hand--"
"Please go first," she said without looking at him. "I'll come directly---as soon as I've read the letter."
"You might wait until to-morrow--"
"This very day! Do me this favor; then to-morrow all will be over."
He took out his pocket book and looked for the fatal letter. "There it is," said he. "I scarcely know myself what she really wrote, except that it excited and grieved me inexpressibly. Oh! if we could find some way to help her endure life! Think of the matter, my beloved Wisdom. I've racked my brains in vain. Perhaps you will have some advice to offer."
She nodded, apparently with the most perfect composure, and while he remained in the room held the letter in her hand, without opening it. But he had scarcely entered the adjoining room with the little lamp he had just lighted, when with trembling hands and cheeks suffused by a sudden flush, she opened the envelope and with restless eyes devoured the lines.
When the maid-servant entered the room early the next morning, she was startled to find her mistress lying asleep on the green sofa, with the lamp, whose oil had now burned out, on the table beside her. Her astonishment increased, when she looked through the half open door of the chamber and saw her master, whose late return she had not heard, quietly sleeping in his bed. The noise she made in her attempt to leave the room again, roused the young wife; she glanced around in her bewilderment and evidently could not remember how she happened to be on this unusual couch. The fatal letter still lay on the table before her, and she suddenly recollected all. She motioned to the servant to keep quiet, and crept on tip-toe to the threshold of the adjoining room, where she paused and listened to Edwin's regular breathing. The next instant she had removed her clothes, noiselessly lain down beside him, and gazing at the twilight with wide open eyes, awaited the unclosing of his.
Chapter III
It was Sunday. The bells that rang at nine o'clock to summon the people to church, roused the sleeper. It was a long time before he remembered how he happened to be in his own bed, and that he was again at home. A quiet, dreamy mood still haunted him, in which he said little, but gazed into vacancy with a smile and then looked around, as if in quest of something. He wanted Leah with him continually, sought her in the kitchen in order with all sorts of jesting words, to bring her back to the sitting room, and then walked up and down the spotless floor with his arm thrown fondly around her, now and then leaning his head on hers and asking various questions, without paying any special attention to the answers she gave. He even spoke of the surprise she had in store for him. "It is nothing," she replied gently, releasing herself from his embrace. Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears; she felt an unconquerable repugnance to telling him her secret, and yet a sense of bitter grief that she could not force her lips to reveal what had hitherto been a source of so much joy. She saw that he was only half with her, or rather that he was striving with all the powers of his soul to return to her again, and yet could not do so entirely. Should she communicate what at any previous time would have caused him such deep happiness, perhaps now only to be thanked with an absent smile? All the pride of the woman and mother rebelled against the possibility.
When Mohr at last arrived, he found them at breakfast. He sat down, begged permission to make a cigarette, and soon gave the conversation a freer tone. The first thing he did, was to take out the promised picture of the little Mohr and hand it to Leah.
"I don't doubt for a moment," said he, "that Edwin has described me to you as a fool of a father. Friends are great in caricaturing, but I really have the honor and pleasure of being just that. Besides, I saw that only politeness restrained him from laughing in my face when I described the boy's talents and virtues. Well, qui vivra verra. Meantime hear what my wife writes about the way he takes my absence. I've just received this letter; it contains the kindest remembrances to you as well."
He then read the letter, which contained a detailed account of the various clever, artless expressions of the little household idol. Edwin listened with silent nods, Leah on the contrary entered into the subject with eager admiration, which seemed to greatly delight their old friend.
"Dear friend," said he, "you have a wonderful knowledge of human nature, far more than this scornful skeptic. If he knows what's for his advantage, he'll allow you to prepare certain chapters of his great psychological work. I'll beg you for a sheet of paper, pen, and ink. I want to write a letter to my son, that we may continue to be in communication with each other."
He actually did so, standing at Edwin's desk and talking with his friends in his usual quaint manner. When Leah had gone out, he asked hastily: "Does she know all?"
"All."
"And how did she take it?"
"As you see. She's an angel--no, something better--a strong, upright, good, noble human being. Do you know, Heinz, I can't shake off the thought that she deserved a better fate than to have for a husband a lunatic, who is so pitifully defenceless against certain witches' arts."
"Defenceless. Well, I declare. We resisted with hands and feet!"
"Yes indeed. We left the field. Discretion is the better part of valor. Oh! Heinz, I feel miserable after that heroic deed. And now to see my dear, patient sufferer, who by no word of complaint, no look of reproach--"
"Hush! She's coming back; there! 'Your loving father.' Now I'm curious to see whether he'll have any idea of how his papa can talk to him when he's not with him. Shall we mail the letter and then pay our respects to Frau Reginchen?"
All three left the little house and strolled through the quiet streets. No one who saw Leah, leaning on Edwin's arm, would have suspected what a deep shadow had suddenly darkened her sunny life.
But it did not escape the notice of the little fair-haired woman in the neighboring, house for a single moment. As soon as the first greetings were over--Papa Feyertag was also present--Reginchen drew Leah aside, to ask what Edwin had said to the joyful news, and was greatly startled when she learned that he had not yet heard a word about it. He had returned home so exhausted that the greatest joy would have been lost upon him, and Mohr's visit had prevented her from telling it early that morning. Reginchen said nothing. Although, as we know, she did not possess a great deal of "education," her clear mind instantly showed her that something unpleasant had occurred, which would not be confided to her at present. She was glad when Reinhold and Mohr entered the nursery and the review of the children began; but could not help laughing and secretly nudging her husband, when the father of the remarkable boy evidently made the greatest effort to do justice to the twins and the little girl, but with the condescending gentleness a Cr[oe]sus would show in congratulating a man who had just won a hundred thalers in a lottery.
He was then obliged to go with Franzelius to see the printing office, the storerooms, and every nook and corner of the house, during which the father-in-law made a silent third party. Edwin had gone into the country alone and did not return until noon, when Reginchen invited them all to dine with her. The meal was not particularly social. Old Feyertag did not say a word and seemed to be out of humor with his son-in-law, who pretended not to notice it, but in spite of the festive occasion was not unfaithful to his silent nature. Edwin sat beside Leah, whom he treated with the utmost gayety and tenderness, but, he still seemed to be in a half dreamy, half absent mood, which at last became so oppressive to her sensitive nature, that she was obliged to leave the table before the dinner was half over to conceal her tears. When she returned with red eyes, she said she had been attacked by one of her sudden headaches, from which, however, she had not suffered for years.
The only person, who seemed to be in high spirits, was Mohr, and it was owing to his efforts, that when they returned to Edwin's house in the evening, a more cheerful atmosphere pervaded the little circle, at least for a time.
During the walk the four men had taken about the city after dinner, he had been compelled to listen to the same melancholy disclosures from the old gentleman, in which the latter had received no special sympathy from Leah the evening before. Mohr, on the contrary, took the matter in the right way, and was psychologist enough to instantly perceive the remedy for the disease.
"I thank you for your confidence, my dear Herr Feyertag," he said after gravely listening to the dream about the boots and shoes. "Your state of mind is extremely interesting to me, the more so, as I've passed through precisely similar crises myself."
"You, Herr Mohr? You're joking."
"Not at all, my dear sir. If you've only cared for the feet all your life, I've spent my best days in merely making heads, that is heads to notes, and also very good tails to them; but the best part was lacking,--the rascals had no hands and feet. You must know, my dear friend, I've just discovered the reason of this, and if I'm not mistaken, the case is precisely the same with you; we're both men of mediocre ability, Herr Feyertag. Once this vexed me very much, and an admirable lecture Papa Zaunkoenig once gave, to prove that there must be such people in the world, was entirely lost upon me. Since then I've grown somewhat wiser. To be sure, it's disagreeable that we're neither of us remarkable men and only belong to the masses, helping to make up the crowd and to prepare the soil which supports the really gigantic human plants. But look around you at Nature--isn't it the same story everywhere? To one oak that lasts for centuries, there are hundreds of thousands of low bushes, which moulder and decay, that this historical representative of the species may grow to an unusual height. If we wish to fret or lament about it, of course we're at liberty to do so. It's only a pity, that there's no court before which we can bring our complaint, for it's useless, my dear sir, and therefore only injurious, first to ourselves because it sours the blood and poisons the wine, and secondly to our fellow men, whose happiness we spoil by our discontent."
"But progress, Herr Mohr, the aspiration toward higher things called propagandism--?"
Mohr stood still. "How old are you now, my dear friend?" he asked, pulling an over ripe ear of corn from the field through which they were just passing.
"Fifty-nine, Herr Mohr."
"An excellent age, Herr Feyertag, and I trust you may live to a still greater. And how tall are you now--I mean in feet and inches?"
"Five feet three inches, Herr Mohr."
"Do you expect to grow any more?"
"I? With my fifty-nine years?"
"But if you desired to do so, if you felt the aspiration to look over a file leader's shoulder?"
"I'm not so foolish, Herr Mohr, as to expect anything of that sort! But if I may venture to ask--"
"Why should you not venture to ask, my dear sir? I merely put the question to have you ask. That's called the Socratic method. You see, with all your aspirations toward higher things, you can no more succeed in adding an ell to your intellectual stature, than you can make your body taller. We're of middle height, Herr Feyertag; in case of need to be sure we can increase a little in breadth, add some fat of knowledge and skill, but the skeleton's complete and that's the end of it! If you compare yourself with me, you have the advantage. True, you're nothing extraordinary as a man, but in the art of shoe-making you're an accomplished master. I, on the contrary--if I did not enjoy the happiness of serving as a transition point for a better specimen, as it were, a test of the real material--I should go out of the world without having understood any reason for my existing in it. But let that be as it may, we non-commissioned officers and privates in the great army of mankind can bear ourselves bravely and win honor; and you in particular, Herr Feyertag--a man in the prime of life, with property, sense, and intelligence--do you know what I would do, if I were in your place?"
"What, Herr Mohr?"
"Your good wife doesn't want to leave Berlin. Well then propose to traverse Berlin itself with her. Go out every morning after breakfast and visit some place, the Arsenal, the Museum, in short what every Englishman sees, and in the evening attend the theatre, the zoological garden, or what ever seems most attractive to you. We can only advance by moving strictly in our own circle, and meantime keeping our eyes open. In this way you'll in time climb far enough up the heights, and yet remain what you are--a man who thoroughly understands his trade, instead of, in your old age, becoming a bungler in the social-political business, where there are too many bunglers now, and which only the wisest heads can thoroughly comprehend."
"Hm!" replied the shoe-maker, "that's worth hearing, that's a very sensible proposition. True, mother won't like it at first, but I'm master of my own house, and if she once gets in--into a museum, I mean--she's always had a clever head and by no means bad taste. I see what you're aiming at, Herr Mohr: propagandism is all very well, but where one has no idea, the mere will is of no avail, and, with my grey hairs, to wander about like a journeyman on his travels--but, by the way, my son-in-law--what do you think of him? Ought he, too, only to go around in a circle and accumulate fat? Do you think him also a man of mediocre ability, like ourselves?"
"Herr Feyertag," said Mohr with a perfectly immovable face, "don't you know that a clever physician is always careful how he expresses his opinion as to whether a person has a diseased liver or apoplexy, unless he's specially consulted by the patient? You expressly asked my advice about your sufferings, and I have told you my honest opinion. In regard to third persons, especially if they're my friends, I never express myself openly and am ready to think every one a great man, until I have received incontestable proofs to the contrary."
Chapter IV
This conversation had this favorable result, that when Papa Feyertag came to Leah's house in the evening, he seemed completely transformed; or rather like the man his friends had formerly known. True he took care to put the best face upon his conversion, but was very reserved about the motives that induced him to return to Berlin. But he endeavored in every way to show that he bore his son-in-law no malice, principally by good natured jests about people who kept quiet to accumulate fat, and thought more about propagation than propagandism; moreover he was the most affectionate papa and grandpapa that could be desired, and related, as never happened except when he was in the best of humors, his own love story, that had led to the possession of "mother."
Mohr sat by with a quiet curl of the under lip, not uttering a syllable to betray the share he had had in the miracle. Besides, very different thoughts occupied his mind. In the first place, Edwin's still perceptible excitement caused him serious anxiety. The two young wives also, especially Leah, were forced to exert great self-control to conceal a heavy heart under a gay, jesting mood. As even the wine and all the comical and quaint ideas to which Mohr gave utterance during the evening, did not avail to lighten the oppression which, like an invisible thunder cloud rested more and more heavily on both couples, the faithful friend sat down to the harmonium and began to improvise. He played for an hour, forgetting time and place in his own music, into which he successively introduced all Christiane's favorite themes. When he at last paused and looked around at the company, he saw that the remedy had produced a totally different effect from the one he had intended. Reinhold was sitting like a black bearded genius of melancholy beside his little wife, who was quietly wiping her eyes; Leah had left the room and after a very long absence returned with a deadly pale face; Edwin had the bread knife in his hand and was industriously cutting a straw table-mat into small pieces; papa Feyertag was leaning back in the sofa corner, sleeping the sleep of the just.
They separated at an earlier hour than usual. Mohr rambled about the city a long time, revolving in his inventive brain one plan after another, by which the evil that had so suddenly burst forth again and threatened to destroy the harmony of these two lives, might be most quickly and surely removed.
At last he devised a perfectly absurd catastrophe, namely that he would represent Toinette as the moral cause of Balder's death and by a bold accusation of murder separate her from Edwin forever. There was not a spark of reason in the whole plan, but the very monstrosity and impossibility of the idea soothed his own excited mood, and enabled him at last, like a man well satisfied with his day's work, to go to bed and sleep seven hours.
But he started up in terror from a dream in which he had said the harshest things to the author of the mischief and engaged to fight a duel with her husband, the count, to see Edwin standing beside his bed in the grey dawn, once more with an overcoat and traveling satchel, such as he had carried during the last days of their journey. Edwin smiled at his friend's astonishment and seemed to have suddenly attained a far more healthful condition of mind.
"I wanted to ask whether you'll go with me," said he. "Leah has persuaded me that it would be foolish to spend the last week of my vacation here. I've long desired to make an excursion to 'Wildwassern,' which will only take three or four days. Besides, I might accomplish many other things, take you back to Frau Christiane and the wonderful boy and return just before the school begins. At first I would not hear of it. I don't feel at ease out of doors; every time I turn a corner I fear to meet a face which I would rather avoid. But, to be sure, wearied and disinclined to work as I am, I should not be of much use here and only make my good wife anxious. You don't know Leah, Heinz, no one knows her, I should like to know how many women there are, who would have borne so nobly what has just befallen us. 'Go,' said she, 'it will do you good; only you must promise not to hurry so madly as you did the last day, but to walk quietly. When you return, you'll find a sensible wife.' Her voice trembled, and her eyes grew dim with tears, but she forced a smile, and then--I've not kissed her lips since I came back, haven't dared to do so, for I remembered that last night at the castle--but when I saw that she could not yet give me a caress! I miss it, miss it so strangely--you'll laugh at me, Heinz, but I think I should be instantly cured, if my only friend, my wise, proud, sad little wife--"
"Then let's go to her at once and tell her so! Besides, I've not yet taken leave of her. And it's so early--"
"No!" interrupted Edwin with restless anxiety, "she'll not expect us. I left farewell messages for our neighbors too. Come, my boy. I don't know why it is, but I can't rest till I get out into the woods and fields again. Your bill here is already settled. Of course the 'Star' is only an addition to our tun in case distinguished travelers arrive, whom we cannot entertain under our own roof."
He hastily helped him to pack his traveling satchel and hurried him away. Just as they left the house, they saw the hotel stage returning, which daily at this hour brought the travelers from the railway. A lady, closely veiled, who must have just arrived by the night train, sat leaning back in one corner of this lumbering vehicle. As she passed the two pedestrians, she made a hasty gesture, as if she recognised some one, but instantly drew back again.
Edwin started. "Did you notice--?" he said quickly.
"What?"
"In the stage--the veiled lady--I thought for a moment, that I recognized--by her way of bending forward--"
"You see ghosts, my dear fellow. Duchesses travel with a suit of retainers, not in an omnibus."
"You're right! Yes indeed, I'm a fool. What could bring her here. But that's the cross I bear every moment. If a carriage rattles by--a door opens--ah! Nature, which made me a philosopher, failed to provide one essential--a suitable dose of the famous ataraxia."
"That's unfortunately true," replied Mohr, shrugging his shoulders. "But your clever wife is right--the plant grows out of doors among the mountains and by the streams. But I too am not wholly insensible, and most earnestly beseech you not to seize me so convulsively, at least before I've breakfasted. We'll attend to this matter at the first stopping place, and then I'll sing you the old Eichendorff traveler's song, which Christiane has set to a very pretty air:
"'Through fields and rows of beech trees, Now singing, anon still, How joyous he, who leaves his home To wander at his will. '"
Chapter V
Meantime Leah, absorbed in grief, was still sitting at the window, from which in the pale morning light she had waved a farewell to her departing husband. As soon as he had disappeared, all the suppressed anguish of the last few days had found vent in a flood of tears, but without relief to the poor aching heart. When the torrent was at last exhausted, she only gazed the more hopelessly into vacancy with burning eyes, as if staring into a grey, impenetrable mist, from which no familiar form emerged, no loving voice reached her ear. The week that Edwin was to be absent, now seemed to her like a respite. During that time she might groan in anguish and weep to her heart's content. When he returned, he should find her what she had always been to him--his brave friend, his faithful comrade, to whom his inmost soul was revealed, even if a passion for a strange woman, the very root of which had seemed to have been destroyed, now flourished luxuriantly anew. True, how could he know that she herself was only a weak woman, who felt all her wise thoughts and heroic reason vanishing in a boundless longing for his love!
A strange reserve, or perhaps pride because he had never asked, had prevented her from telling him this.
But he needed passionate love--in her terror this had now become evident to her. The cooler his head was, the more vehemently his heart demanded boundless, self-forgetful folly, a love higher than reason. He had now found it--in the magic castle, where the old demon had resumed its sway over him. The enchantress herself had cast aside her black art to practise a more powerful and irresistible one--to throw herself into his arms in the guise of a poor helpless woman saying: "I am yours; do with me as you will." And was he to disdain all this and reply: "You come too late?"--Well, he had said so. He knew what he owed to duty. But to accept this martyrdom, to hold a man by an iron chain, against which every instinct of his blood rebelled--a feverish chill ran through her frame at the thought.
True, she might stake passion against passion, and see which would conquer, hers that was really no tamer and narrower than any ever offered by a woman to the man she loved, or the capricious one of this stranger, who now when it was too late, wanted to throw away a lost life, to regain her happiness in her saviour. But her pride rebelled against this also. Had he ever missed her passionate love? Could he believe, now that she had so long denied it utterance, that it was really true and genuine, not an ebullition of jealous pain, rather than the outburst of one of the hidden powers of nature?
But amid all this tumult of thoughts, one emotion was ever absent from her mind--no feeling of anger toward the two persons who now made her suffer so bitterly, stirred in her soul. The woman who had no scruple in making her life desolate, in wresting from her, her only happiness, of whom she knew nothing, except that she had bewitched her beloved husband and yet had not satisfied his heart--what did she this stranger? And Edwin--had he deceived her? Did he not suffer most bitterly, because he esteemed and honored her too highly to make even an attempt to delude her about his condition?
But the very fact of his remaining loving, affectionate and honest to her, and continuing to give her a brotherly share in his fate was unendurable. She could not suffer it longer, for it mocked her heart, whose inmost depths were overflowing with passionate love. Yet she did not know how to change it, what to say to him, when he should return with his wound nearly healed to place himself in her sisterly care--lest some day, by accident the wound should begin to bleed again and perhaps endanger his life. But did she not also owe something to herself and the child she bore under her heart? Could she suffer the poor thing to be greeted by its father with a joy only prompted by a sense of duty, and perhaps--who knows--secretly regarded as a new link in the oppressive chain that must be worn with the best possible grace? At this thought, the mother's blood in her rebelled with such fierce indignation and wrath, that for a moment an odious shadow darkened even Edwin's image. But the next instant she shrank from her own impetuosity, and with all the power of her will repelled the hostile feeling.
For the first time in her life, since she had been united to Edwin, she felt unspeakably alone. What would she have given for a friend who might have aided her to disentangle the sorrowful confusion of her thoughts? She remembered Reginchen--Reinhold--and instantly felt that no one, even if bound by far closer ties, possessing a much deeper insight into her nature, could have been a mediator between her fate and her womanly pride, her husband and her inmost feelings.
For hours she remained hopelessly striving to quell the tumult in her soul; at length her thoughts grew weary, and she began to perform her few household tasks, which were speedily accomplished. Then she mechanically took up one of Edwin's works and commenced to read; for a moment she was soothed by the thought of how thoroughly she understood all that would have been above the comprehension of many women, only to throw aside the book the next instant with passionate grief, as she remembered how powerless all the cultivation of the mind would be to the blind, unreasoning, elementary instinct of Nature, which conquers all freedom and befools the wisest. She herself felt this instinct in her heart more strongly than ever, and she remembered how happy she had been made by it only two evenings before--only to be rendered utterly wretched by it now since it had shown her the emptiness of her hopes.
Herr Feyertag's arrival roused her from this abstraction. The old man knew nothing about Edwin's departure, and came to say that he should return home that evening. He was in a comically mysterious mood, gave obscure hints of the reasons that had so suddenly recalled him to Berlin, but repeatedly declared that he felt as if he were new born, and people were never too old to go to school. As Mohr was also absent, he could indulge in the harmless pleasure of uttering many of the things he had heard yesterday from his clever physician of the mind--especially the theory of the oak trees and the soil of humanity--as the result of his own matured wisdom, in such a lofty, matter-of-course tone, that several times Leah, in spite of her sorrow could not help laughing, for she easily perceived their source.
"I'll tell you, little lady," exclaimed the eager old man, as he concluded his remarks about the necessity of first advancing public welfare in our own persons, "come with me to Berlin to-night. Why should you stay here alone? Your husband can have no objections to your devoting this week to your dear parents, and it will afford me the greatest pleasure to show you Berlin, the Museum, the theatre, and of course we'll go out to Sans Souci too; as a native of Berlin, you ought to be ashamed of knowing next to nothing of all these things. Just to consider how many means of culture are daily at hand, that we need only stretch out our hands for, and just because they're not a long distance off--"
She shook her head with a forced smile. "Thank you, dear Herr Feyertag. But just now I really do not desire culture, so much as--rest, or whatever else you choose to call it. Give my parents the kindest remembrances from me, don't let them know that you found me with one of my bad headaches; when I come to Berlin, I want to bring with me clear eyes--and my husband."
The worthy old friend, who after all had not been very earnest in his proposal, could urge her no further, and after uttering all sorts of fine phrases, took leave of the young wife with unfeigned affection. She declined the invitation to dinner which he pressed upon her in Reginchen's name. Her stupid head was not fit for company. She was most comfortable alone, where no one could notice if her thoughts sometimes grew confused.
The shoemaker was scarcely in the street again, when in spite of his sincere regard for Leah, he banished from his mind all the sympathy he had felt for her suffering, and with the facility peculiar to many theoretical philanthropists, turned his thoughts to his own plans. He therefore looked up in some little bewilderment, when a slender lady accosted him in a musical, but somewhat low voice, and inquired the way to the Frau Doctorin's residence. The stranger was closely veiled, but the old man's practised eye did not permit him to doubt for a moment, that the person who stood before him was young, charming, and high-bred. He also noticed a faint perfume of violets, which floated from the lady's lace veil. He very politely offered to accompany and show her the few steps to Edwin's house, in doing which he remarked that the Herr Doctor had just gone away on a little pedestrian tour, but that his wife was at home. "I know it," said the lady. "I only wish to see his wife. Shall I probably find her alone?"
The shoe-maker answered in the affirmative and racked his cunning brains for means to find out something more about the veiled lady who, as he was instantly convinced, could not be a resident of the place. But unfortunately they had already reached the house, the stranger thanked him with a slight bend of the head, opened the door without ceremony, and disappeared in the dark hall.
Never had the old man been more bent upon the solution of a riddle or charade, over which he regularly pondered in the papers, than on discovering the cause of this visit. This was the only woman who wore a veil, that he had met in the little town. That she could be acquainted with Leah, while his daughter knew nothing about her, seemed to him incredible, so he determined to question Reginchen.
But this proved utterly useless. No lady answering to his description was known, even in the highest circles of society in the place. And yet, if it were a stranger, how could she know that Edwin had gone away and Leah was alone, facts that the friend and neighbor had just learned from her father?
The mystery must be solved in time, and Reginchen, like all people who are entirely in harmony with themselves, did not suffer in the least from curiosity, but even declined to send a servant to Leah to enquire about the matter. She had much graver cares, which were also connected with Edwin's household, but apparently had nothing to do with the accidental visit of a stranger.
However, in the course of the day the old man, who was not in the habit of keeping his mind long fixed upon one thought, also lost his curiosity, as no fresh incident occurred to excite it. Leah's name was not mentioned, nor the attempt to induce the lonely wife to join them at dinner again renewed. Papa Feyertag was very cheerful during the meal, talked of new inventions, of war and peace, and of the social question, but without any personal irritation, and spent the whole afternoon in drawing the most singular sounds from all sorts of imperfect wind instruments he had bought for the twins, to the great edification of his young auditors.
Reinhold, in his quiet fashion, seemed to be heartily pleased with this change of affairs, stopped his work half an hour earlier, and at seven o'clock was again in the sitting room to take tea with his father-in-law before his departure. The children had been put to bed, and the three adults had just seated themselves around the table, when the door opened and to the surprise of all, frequent as was the appearance of the visitor, Leah entered.
Chapter VI
The lamp was not yet lighted, and the broad brim of her straw hat shadowed her face, yet all three noticed, though no one made any remark, that the young wife's features were strangely rigid and inanimate, like the face of a person who has endured severe sorrow and, with a certain savage indifference, is prepared for the worst.
She nodded to Reginchen, begged her in her usual tone not to disturb herself, and declining the chair the old man placed at the table, sat down in the window niche, with her face half averted. In reply to the question about her headache, she answered that it had passed away entirely. She had taken a nap, then eaten her dinner, and had never felt better than now, so she had thought of Papa Feyertag's proposal again, and determined to accept it.
"What proposal?" asked Reginchen. The old man himself would have been sorely puzzled if he had been obliged to answer the question. But Leah replied in his stead.
"For," she hastily burst forth, "what better could I do? My father is old and does not like to travel. Edwin, will not return until the end of the week; I've nothing to detain me here, and who knows when I shall find another such opportunity. How long is it before the train starts? A whole hour? Well, you must allow my presence here until then. At home--it's ridiculous--but I think if I had remained at home, my headache would have come on again. We're so weak, so irresolute when we're all alone, and yet nothing can be more sensible than this plan. Edwin himself, if he were here--but no, then I should not be alone. You say nothing, Herr Feyertag. Do you repent having offered to be my escort? I'll not make you the slightest trouble, you can smoke and sleep as much as you choose, I--I'll go in the ladies' coupe, I hope to be able to sleep too; after such a headache as I've had all day, I am not very entertaining in conversation."
"How can you think of such a thing?" said the old man. Then all were silent for a long time. Nothing was heard but the clicking of a little pair of scissors, which Leah had taken from Reginchen's work table and was opening and shutting.
"Before I forget it," Leah carelessly remarked, "as it's possible Edwin may return a few days before me, I've written him a few lines. If meantime a letter should come from him containing his address, or he himself should arrive--at any rate, you'll doubtless do me the favor to see that this note reaches him."
"Give it to me, Leah dear," said Reinhold rising. "Father, will you have another glass of wine? But you're not eating anything."
"It's not my time. And your famous dinner--Well, I'll go and look after my baggage. I've only to shut my little trunk."
He hastily rose--he evidently did not understand matters--and left the room.
Reinhold had also risen. He had put the little note which Leah had given him, in his pocket and now said: "I'll accompany you to the station of course. I must first give some business directions, but I'll come back again directly." He exchanged a significant glance with his wife, and left the room. The two women were now alone, Reginchen on the sofa in the dark corner, Leah at the window with her back turned toward the room.
"Have you nothing else for me to do, dearest Leah?" asked the little housekeeper after a pause.
"Nothing, Ginchen. What should I have? I leave no children behind, and Edwin's books require no care. The cook will water the flowers. But you--your mother--hark! Didn't the clock strike eight?"
"Seven. There's still a full hour--Leah--"
"What is it, child?"
"Have you reflected upon this?"
"What a strange question to ask? What is there to consider? A journey to my parents! one falls asleep here, and on awaking finds oneself at home."
"At home, Leah?"
There was no answer from the window. No one who could have obtained even a side view of the face gazing fixedly out, would have expected these compressed lips, that seemed with difficulty to repress a groan, to open for any intelligible answer.
Suddenly two arms embraced the motionless figure, and a fair head in a neat little cap nestled to the pale cheek of the silent friend. "Leah," whispered Reginchen's voice, "if you love me, don't do it, don't go away; it can't be the right thing; or at least speak plainly first. What, for God's sake, what has happened, to drive you away so suddenly, as if--as if you were not at home here."
She covered the eyes and cheeks of the rigid face with the tenderest kisses. The next instant Leah gently released herself.
"I don't know what you mean," she said coldly. "You're childish in your anxiety about me. What should have happened? Let me alone, little goosey. I know what I'm doing only too well; that this is the best, the only thing, now I'm all alone--"
"You're right, dear Leah," they heard Reinhold's voice suddenly exclaim. "Don't listen to this foolish woman, who can't believe any one can leave home for pleasure--that's what she means by not right. But we still have half an hour; I should like to speak to you; I have a little commission to be done in Berlin, with which I didn't want to trouble Father."
"Willingly, dear Reinhold."
"But I must beg you to take the trouble to come up to my little attic room; I cannot tell you here, partly because we are liable to be interrupted at any moment, and partly because I keep what's necessary for the errand up there. Light the little lantern, child; I believe you've never been up in our garret--true, it's an old rat's nest, but as I'd not a corner in the whole house where I can work or think quietly away from the children, I furnished a room there."
Reginchen had taken a brass lantern from the cupboard and lighted the lamp in it. As she now handed it to her husband, these three who were so fondly attached to each other, for the first time dared not look each other in the face. The little wife cast down her eyes without uttering a syllable. Leah had risen, still in her hat and traveling cloak, as she had come. Reinhold's honest face looked strange and gloomy, framed in its black hair and bushy beard.
He silently took the lantern from Reginchen, and preceded Leah up the narrow, time begrimmed staircase that led to the store rooms. He did not address a word to her as she followed close behind him. Not until they had walked through a large portion of the garret, across whose ceiling ran heavy beams, and he had turned the key in the door of a low room, did he pause a moment and say: "I'm taking you into my holy of holies, Leah."
Then he opened it, crossed the threshold with the light, and allowed her also to enter.
At the first glance it seemed a mere attic chamber, like hundreds of others, only perhaps somewhat higher, but as if to make amends for this the roof sloped the more, the ancient beams, which supported it, seeming no longer able to do their duty. But as Franzelius set the lantern on the little black stove and lighted a small lamp, Leah saw that the walls were covered with neat grey paper, and the few articles of furniture were kept scrupulously free from dust. The whole end of the room before the window was filled with something which she did not instantly recognize. When the lamplight penetrated to the window, she perceived that it was a turning lathe, and she instantly knew why this awkward piece of furniture stood in Reinhold's holy of holies. He seemed to use it for a writing table; a portfolio, books, and writing materials lay upon it, all in the neatest order. On the right and left of the single deep window niche, where in the daytime scarcely a ray of light could fall, two wide carved brackets were fastened to the wall. The one on the left bore the mask of Michael Angelo's prisoner, the other a square object, like a small box, covered with a cloth. The room contained no other furniture, except a small book-case and two plain cane chairs.
"Won't you sit down, dear Leah?" asked the silent guide, after he had set down the lamp on the stove beside the lantern. He did not look at her, but she saw that the hand which had held the little lamp trembled.
"Thank you," she replied, "I'm not tired. Tell me the commission you wanted to give me."
"Commission? I have none; pardon me, dear friend, it was only a paltry excuse; didn't you see through it at once: And besides, if I had anything to be done in Berlin, I could not entrust it to you--for you'll not go there yourself."
"Why do you attempt to dissuade me? Don't trouble yourself. I've made up my mind; I think I know what I am doing."
Notwithstanding her refusal, she sat down, as if absorbed in thought, in the chair he had placed for her, and diligently thrust the point of her parasol into a hole in the floor, seeming for a moment to forget everything around her.
"You've made up your mind?" he said with a very sorrowful face. "Of course you're mistress of your own actions. But in that case I must tell you that I have also made up my mind, not to give your letter to Edwin."
"You've read it? Oh Reinhold!" A hasty, indignant glance from her eyes met his. The next instant she lowered them to the ground in confusion.
"I have not read it," he said gravely. "Here it is; convince yourself that that the seal is unbroken. But it is just the same as if I had." She started up and moved toward the door, but suddenly paused halfway.
"Do not go," he pleaded. "There's time enough for that, when you've listened to what I have to say. Tell me frankly: can you expect me, when Edwin returns, to give him a letter in which his wife informs him, that she has left him, because she can no longer live beneath his roof?"
"Would I have said that? Would I have said it so? Now I ask you to open the letter, Reinhold, that you may see what I have told him."
"I thank you for your confidence, dear friend, but I will not read the letter which you will soon reproach yourself for having written. Besides, I know very nearly what you've said, to palliate what you're about to do to him--and yourself."
"Palliate? What I'm about to do is for his good; what it costs me no one knows."
She had sunk down into the chair, with her forehead pressed against the back; a shudder seemed to convulse her slight frame.
"Will you not bestow upon me the same confidence he has given?" she heard Franzelius ask after a pause. "True, his friendship is of an older date, but when you became his wife, it seemed to me as if I had loved you from childhood as my sister. Dear Leah, he has told me all he told you. And do you think so old a friend cannot feel how much suffering this heavy trial causes you?" She suddenly looked him full in the face, her features no longer distorted by passion, but an expression of such hopeless grief rested on her brow and lips, that he shrank back in alarm.
"He told you all? Yes, all he knew of his own heart. What could he have said to you of mine? What does he know about it? True, it's not his fault. I've always been ashamed to unbosom myself, to confess how I idolize him, how madly I love him. It might be unwelcome to him, I thought, since he--well, you know, for you're his friend; what he said about his 'intellectual love' sounded so pretty, very pretty for a philosopher and commendable for his wife also, if she had as much philosophy in her head as he expected, and no unbridled, tumultuous heart, that refused to listen to reason. 'If he should perceive,' I thought, 'that I have my mother's blood in my veins, hot, old-testament blood--perhaps he'll discover that he made a great mistake in thinking he could make a "sensible marriage" with such a nature, as a consolation for a lost love.' And then I also thought: 'who knows what may happen? Perhaps the day will come when I can tell him all, because he himself will no longer be satisfied with a modest happiness, but ask something prouder, higher, more enthusiastic, and then I can say to him: "you need not seek far, still waters run deep; you've yet to know your own wife, with whom you have lived so long unsuspicious of her true nature."' I was going to say it to him when he returned from this pedestrian tour; it seemed to me, from his letters, as if the last spark of the old fire had burned out, and he was longing for a new passion, a fervent love, which would completely engulf him, and after four years of married life, he now, for the first time, loved me with a new, yearning, longing affection. It gave me such delight. But I was rightly served; my weakness or delusion, or whatever it may have been--must be punished. Why did I not confess to him at once, that I should be miserable if he only chose me for his wife on account of my few intellectual qualities? Why did I not tell him I, too, must have all or nothing, and was far less suited for a 'sensible marriage,' than many a far more foolish creature? Now my fate has overtaken me--and his, him--and you want, by means of a few friendly, sensible arguments to heal the breech which has burst open again, the breech which ought never to have been closed."
She had arisen, and was pacing excitedly up and down the narrow room, while he sat silently on one corner of the turning lathe with his head bowed on his breast.
"You're slandering, Leah!" he said in a hollow tone. "You're slandering his heart."
"His heart?" she passionately replied. "Has he a heart he can call his? Oh! don't suppose I'm reproaching him for the lack of it! Yesterday I often thought--ought the remembrance of all the grave and joyous, pleasant and painful things we have shared together for four years, to be utterly effaced and blown away? Had not his heart been animated and warmed by mine till both beat in unison, in all questions of life great and small? You see, I thought so yesterday; today I no longer hold the same opinion, but find the present state of thing perfectly natural."
"To-day--what has happened to-day, that has so suddenly--"
She approached him till she stood close by his side, and without raising her eyes to his, whispered in an undertone: "To-day I've made her acquaintance."
"What? Then the veiled lady--"
"Came in search of him and found only me. Don't you agree with me, Reinhold, that under these circumstances it's quite time for the wife to go away, that the husband may be at home when such an agreeable visitor arrives?"
"Leah! What are you saying? You don't know how you wrong him. He--what did he know about her mad plan? And if he had been aware of it, would he not have gone away just at the right time to baffle it?"
"Yes indeed," she nodded with a bitter expression on her face, "he would have fled from his fate to-day and to-morrow until it should overtake him at last. No, my friend, I do not wrong him; I know how he suffers, and I also know that it will be no disgrace if he succumbs. I have never seen such a woman; will you believe that I, who had good reasons for hating her, could not help loving her; not merely thinking her charming, more charming than I have ever thought any of my own sex before, but liking, loving her! Or no, I will not say too much; but I understand how people cannot help loving her unless they have reasons for hating her as strong as mine."
"Did she make herself known to you?"
"Not by a single syllable. But as soon as she entered the door, even before she threw back her veil, I knew it was she! She cast a hasty glance around the room, a glance that sought him. If I had not been dazzled and fascinated by her appearance, I should have said at once: 'He's not here. Countess, you've come in vain.' But I was silent, and allowed her to speak first, and then, when I had heard her voice, it was too late. She asked for me, she wanted to find some pretext for remaining until he returned, and I secretly admired her presence of mind. She had seen some of my paintings in the house of a lady acquaintance in Berlin, she said, and was so much pleased with them, that while on a journey she had stopped in the city, to make my acquaintance and learn whether she might hope to possess some of my work, she did not care what, a plate with fruit painted on it, a vase, or a flower piece in oils.
"At first her voice trembled, then she grew calmer and threw back her veil. Oh! I understood her perfectly. She was now convinced that she had nothing to fear from me, that the insignificant creature before her could make no pretensions to offer any compensation for the happiness virtuously disdained by the man, to whom she stood ready to give herself. And she was right, I instantly said to myself. Must I, if unhappy be so foolish also, as to deceive myself? And precisely because I instantly lost all hope, I obtained the composure and clearness of mind which I should not have preserved if either hope or defiance had lingered in my heart. I answered her without the least embarrassment, and showed her my portfolio, telling her that I now only painted for my own amusement and gave my productions to my friends. 'Then of course I have no hope of obtaining anything?' she said. I made no reply. Was I to lie, by saying courteously that it would afford me pleasure to do her a friendly service? But she did not expect it. She sat silently on the sofa, and there was a long pause in the conversation between us. Her eyes--what beautiful eyes she has!--wandered slowly and absently around the room. 'Your husband works there!' she said at last, pointing to his desk. 'And you sit yonder, close beside him, and it does not disturb him?' She sighed involuntarily. Probably for a moment it seemed to her as if she were destroying something that was good and beautiful and worthy of existence. I could look at her closely. I don't know now how I had the heart to do so. But she was so charming! 'Those eyes,' I said to myself, 'have stolen your happiness, those red, full lips have kissed him, drawn away from him all power to be happy with another woman.' Strange as it was I sat there beside her, wishing I was lying a hundred fathoms under the earth, and Edwin was sitting in my place. Then I was angry with myself that I could be so impartial, so terribly just, instead of looking at her with jealous rage and anger, for which I really had good cause. 'She has come to triumph over you,' cried a voice in my soul. 'She wants to outshine you, to tear him away from you before your eyes, and you sit beside her and all you feel is a sense of inexpressible sorrow.' I was beginning to hate myself, that I could offer no better resistance to this magic. Then, without the slightest pretext, she suddenly began to talk of my husband, inquired about him like a perfect stranger, who had only seen him casually, and read more things about him than by him. I don't know how it was--I ought to have been too proud to speak of him, at least as I did, as we only pour out to an intimate friend the deepest feelings of the heart about a person we love. But I probably thought I owed it to myself, to show that I was well aware what I had possessed and must lose in him. So I said just what came into my mind, and she sat nodding silently, without uttering a syllable, until I had talked myself in to an excited mood, and suddenly paused with some commonplace apology. My heart throbbed almost to bursting. The bitter anguish of the fact that we should be on such terms, suddenly burst upon me. God knows what I was about to say, when she rose, drew off her glove, and held out her hand, which in my bewilderment I actually took. 'Thank you,' said she. 'How much I should like to stay longer, for I see we understand each other in many things. But I must go, or I shall be missed. Farewell, dear wife, may you be happy. Think often--'
"She was about to add something, but her voice failed. Suddenly I felt her throw her arms around me and press her beautiful lips three times to mine; then before I could collect my thoughts, she had hurried out of the room and I was alone with my shame and astonishment.
"No, precisely because she is better than I thought, I must make room for her. I know now, for I have experienced it myself--he who has once seen her can never forget her again; he whom she has once kissed, must be her slave. But to be her slave would cause no pain, while other chains--No, no, he shall not bear this burden. I will go away, will not play the base, unworthy part of a third person, who is merely tolerated, secretly wished dead a thousand times. Besides, what is it? Have I not possessed for four years, what must now be restored to the hands of the rightful owner? Am I the first, or shall I be the last woman, in whom a good, generous, noble man has been mistaken, when he supposed she could fill his heart, and at whose feet he now, to the end of his life, wishes to lay his duty, heroic, self-sacrificing? Fie, who can accept such a sacrifice? Not I--not I--by my mother's blood, which lives in me--not I!"
While uttering the last words, she had approached the door and now laid her hand on the lock, saying: "Adieu! It is time--" when Franzelius suddenly stood close beside her, placed his hand gently on her arm, and looking steadily into her face, said:
"And yet notwithstanding all this, you will not go, Leah?"
"Not go? After all you have just heard?"
"No, Leah not even now."
She hastily released herself from his hold, and looked at him with eyes flashing with anger; "I don't understand you, Reinhold. By what right--"
"By what right do I interfere when you want to plunge into an abyss, and drag Edwin with you? Can you ask, Leah? Must I explain to you, as to a total stranger? Well then, I will remind you of what you have forgotten, of him from whom I derive the right to fill a brother's place to you and Edwin, because I promised him to do so, because it was his legacy to me, a legacy, which I hold sacred and will fulfil to my latest breath. If the living fails to persuade you to do your duty, to perceive what your duty is--perhaps the dead may better succeed."
While he uttered these words he had approached the window and hastily removed the covering from the bracket on the right. Under a square glass cover, on a black cushion, lay Balder's death-mask, so warmly illuminated by the lamplight, that the pure features of the beautiful, still countenance, seemed to be animate with life. Leah sank back into the chair in silence. In her first bewilderment she did not venture to open her eyes.
"Take courage to look at him, dear friend," said Reinhold after a long pause; "when you have conquered the first feeling of awe, you will become more and more calm in the presence of this face. Do you not think the resemblance very striking, seen from the side? Edwin's sister we might say. It was thus you saw this noble man for the first and last time--you have never heard his voice, never seen his eyes or his smile--you came too late. But believe me if he were now on earth, he would not have used so many words as I; he would only have looked at you, and to leave Edwin would have seemed impossible."
Still she did not utter a word, but sat on the chair in the middle of the room with both hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes streaming with tears, fixed steadily upon the pale profile. He did not know whether she even heard what he said. But his heart was full and overflowed again.
"No, my friend," said he, "it was an error of your heart, a human weakness, which cannot last in the presence of death--the end of all human joys and sorrows. What, did you intend to leave him alone in the hardest trial of his life? Can you really doubt that he will be truly miserable for the first time, when he loses you? The old disease has attacked him again, but would he have instantly placed himself in your care, if he had not felt that he could only be cured with the aid and under the protection of the old, sacred, eternal powers of true love and faith? And must he now find an empty house, a cold hearth, darkness around him, and the threshold from which hostile spectres are wont to recoil, no longer guarded by good household spirits? And will she, who is about to inflict this pain upon him, attempt to delude herself and him with the fancy that she is making a sacrifice for his sake? For her own sake, she ought to say, for the sake of her pride, her jealous, offended heart, that cannot endure the thought of not making this beloved husband forget every thing beside itself.
"Forgive these harsh words, dear Leah," he pleaded, approaching her and trying to take her hand. "If you were not the woman, whom I have so heartily rejoiced that he obtained for a wife, a woman as high-hearted and brave as himself, perhaps you would be right in what you are doing. One would scarcely dissuade a woman of the ordinary stamp, from making the attempt to bring her husband back to her, by leaving him for a time. But you, dear Leah, ought not to allow any petty arts, any sensitive pouting and reserve, to come between yourself and him. If he has caused you pain, has he not suffered most bitterly himself? Would he have left you again now, if he had not felt how it must torture you to see his condition? He--that I know--feels that he could not be cured anywhere so quickly as near you. If you had heard how he talked to me about you--oh! dear Leah, no man has ever struggled more honestly against the powers of evil, and shall his natural champion, from whose presence he might draw new strength, desert her colors?
"Come. Compose yourself. Turn your eyes away from that glorified face--it moves you too deeply. Oh! dearest Leah, you're not the first who has learned from the dead, what we owe to the living. I've sat in this very chair through many an hour of bitter conflict, when I knew not what to do; and when it has sometimes happened that my dear wife and I did not agree, we came quietly up here, first I, and ere long she, and we soon saw clearly what we ought to do. You know yourself, dear friend, every thing in life is not as plain as a sum in arithmetic, where we only need to write down the fraction that is left over. Therefore we must question our dead, our immortal ones, and they will not leave us long in doubt about the answer."
He had taken both her hands, and was gazing down at her with a look of the tenderest love. She suddenly rose and threw her arms around his neck. "Dear--true--only friend," was all she could falter amid her sobs.
After a time some one knocked gently at the door, and Reginchen's voice said that her father was going and wanted to take leave of Reinhold. As there was no sound from the attic room, the little wife then opened the door and timidly entered.
Reinhold gently released himself from Leah, who was still clinging to him in violent agitation. "Do you take charge of her now," he said to Reginchen, "we shall keep her."
"I knew it, Reinhold," replied the little wife, smiling through her tears; "you don't talk often, but when you do speak, you can move mountains. Has he turned your heart, you naughty woman, when you wouldn't be touched by my fondest words? Now I find her here on the most affectionate terms with my own husband, and must get jealous of my only friend forsooth, in my old age."
Long after Reinhold had left the house and was on his way to the railway station with his father-in-law, who understood nothing about the matter, the two friends remained clasped in each other's arms, Leah seated in the lap of Reginchen, who often pressed her to her heart with almost motherly tenderness. They said nothing, but leaned their heads against each other and looked up to the bracket from which the dead man's gentle face gazed down upon them in pure and calm majesty.
Chapter VII
Meantime the two friends had spent their day in a somewhat grave mood.
It was easy to say and sing:
"How joyous he, who leaves his home, To wander at his will,"
but difficult to realize it. After Mohr had sung all the verses in his best style, and Edwin at the conclusion had only remarked absently, that the air was very gay--a recognition the composer's husband did not consider sufficiently warm--they walked on for an hour without speaking, except in monosyllables. "You'll forgive my old uncivil habit, Heinz," Edwin had said. "The morning hour to me has gold in its mouth, and silence is golden."
"Hm!" muttered Mohr, "I don't know what we two should have to say to each other."
Nor did aught of importance occur to him in the second or third hour. The day was hot, the road through the forest cool and pleasant, but as it led into the mountains, both men, who were usually such sturdy pedestrians, seemed to find every step a burden.
The sun blazed hotly down, as they climbed a height overgrown with low bushes, from which the ruins of a stately castle overlooked a broad extent of country. They had hoped to find an inn here, but the little house which had formerly been used for that purpose, was deserted, and the tiny garden full of weeds and robbed of its summer fruits; only the well was still ready to do its duty. When they had partially quenched their thirst, they stretched themselves on the turf under the shadow of the ruined barbican, and Mohr began to make a cigarette.
"If we could only have a rubber of whist or a game of piquet," he sighed.
"In broad daylight, here on the green grass?" replied Edwin smiling. "Incorrigible sinner."
Mohr looked askance at him and shrugged his shoulders. "My worthy saint," he growled, "how often have I told you that this is one of your limitations; you've no taste for play. But just wait till you've written your book, completed your system. Then you'll have satisfied your soul's longing, and your eyes will be opened to the fact that a sensible man can take even play seriously."
"'There's often a deep meaning in children's games:' a wise man said that."
"Yes indeed, and a philosopher by trade ought to be the last to scoff at it. A game of whist, my dear fellow, is life in miniature, where one has more luck than judgment, another more judgment than luck, a third who holds the best trumps doesn't know what to do with them, while the fourth, who would probably have made the most of them, loses the cards at last by his partner's awkwardness, at the utmost counting only his honors. I never take a hand at cards, without a certain feeling of solemnity, as if we then compelled fate, which usually only allows herself to be seen through a rift in the clouds, to sit down close beside us and show her real colors. What, on the contrary, is a melodrama, comedy, or tragedy, at which fate is separated from us by the orchestra and prompter's box, and we can lose nothing except our admission fee and faith in a new development of the German stage? Instead of the 'stage,' we ought to talk of 'the cards' that parody the world."
"A fine world, in which there are only knaves, kings, and queens, with the exception of a few insignificant mutes; and all this for a few penitents! No, my dear fellow, as I lack an appreciation of money, even more than an appreciation of play--"
Mohr puffed huge clouds of smoke into the air. "If you only say that, to avoid being compelled to acknowledge that I'm right, I'll forgive you," he said calmly. "But if you really made such a worthless remark in earnest, I pity you. You're generally clever, Edwin, or rather you think it worth while, when we're talking together, not only to pour out pure wine for me, but, as I'm a connoisseur, your best brands. Shall I tell you why, at this moment, you don't care a straw what you say? Because, for the last three hours, I've only rejoiced in your bodily presence, your soul has been far away."
"And where has it taken up its abode, omniscient friend?"
"Hm! do you see the telegraph poles, which appear between the pines yonder, and show that iron rails run through the forest beneath them? If, for a few hours, you follow toward the East the wires which are scarcely visible from here, in the direction from whence we have just come, your worthy body will reach the spot where your honored soul is at the present moment, and which it has not left five minutes today."
"You maybe right, my dear fellow," replied Edwin gravely. "I confess I've been thinking all the morning, whether it was not ridiculous nonsense to leave my little wife again, and without even a farewell kiss. She cannot feel happy, and I'm very miserable, while you, poor martyr to friendship, must be bored with me, whether you like it or not. No"--and he sprang to his feet with sudden resolution--"we must not carry anything too far, even want of consideration for our friends. Do you think I don't know that by following the telegraph wire toward the West, we shall in a few hours reach the spot where your heart dwells, though your mind, even if not in its most brilliant mood, may be beside me."
"Pray leave my insignificant self entirely out of the question. The matter under discussion is what's best for you, and with all due deference to Frau Leah's worldly wisdom, I think she made a mistake this time."
"Do you think so too?" cried Edwin with beaming eyes. "Well, my Socratic fiend has been saying the same thing, but the habit of respecting superior wisdom--no, I'll emancipate myself, I frankly declare that this distasteful bodily exercise, while the soul remains immovable in one spot, is unworthy of a sensible man and does more harm than good; in a word, I absolve you from the painful duty of acting as bear leader, and will go back at full speed, until I see the smoke of my own chimney."
"Stop," exclaimed Mohr, throwing his cigarette over the precipice. "Praiseworthy as this hasty resolution appears, for this day you belong to me; in the first place, because it will be salutary for your wife to do without you again for a whole day, and secondly, because neither at my home, nor during these last few days of travel, have we said anything about your work. That book my friend, must eventually be written. I should like to know how far you have progressed with the system, or whether the old step-mother, Mathematics, has so maltreated the tender little soul. Psychology, which cannot live without fancy, that we must despair of its attaining any further growth. Who knows when we shall see each other again. That we shall not write very frequently is unfortunately more than probable, and besides, now-a-days, letters contain nothing of any real importance. So be kind enough to sit down beside me again and submit to an examination. Or still better, let us drag ourselves to the next village, breakfast, and then begin."
They did so. Mohr was well aware that next to the gentle but powerful magic of Leah's presence, nothing could be so soothing to his friend's agitated soul, as to resolve to do what in his modesty he had always deferred, collect the work of the last few years in a large volume. Now, for the first time, while sketching the outlines to his sympathizing listener, Edwin felt that nothing essential was really lacking, that he only needed to go to work with a firm purpose and a good heart. Heinrich encouraged him in his resolve in every possible way.
"If you want to wait till you have nothing more to learn, before you begin to teach, you can write only posthumous books. I must preach very nearly the same sermon with which I yesterday converted a much more eccentric Christian; your head has reached its full growth, I think. It may be refurnished in one way or another; have a window cut here or there, but the foundations will not enlarge. And as it is tolerably spacious and not ill planned, it will be useful for the world to know how it (the world, I mean,) is reflected in this head. For my part, I have a special interest in wishing the book to be written soon; in the first place, because it must be dedicated to me and our ex-tribune of the people; and secondly, because in my own unfruitfulness, it is a satisfaction to have friends who can make themselves talked about and accomplish something entire."
When, toward evening, they parted, and Mohr went to the station, to return to his wife and child, both, though without showing it except by a somewhat over-strained gayety, were very much agitated. They had again shared what binds human beings most closely to each other, pure, unselfish hours of grave meditation and quiet sympathy, in the contemplation of the eternal verities. And moreover they felt themselves bound more strongly to each other by a renewal of the old friendship which may, even when the thoughts are unlike, and the topmost branches as it were divide, forever entwine the roots of two lives.
It was already dark, when Edwin also set out by rail to return to the little city which he had left in the morning. The unconquerable longing for home had increased to an actual fever, during the hour he was obliged to wait at the station. When the train at last stopped in the town, which now contained his world, he sprang hastily out, looking neither to the right nor left, lest he should see some acquaintance who might detain him. He did not notice the two men who had been waiting for the arrival of the same train, Reinhold and Herr Feyertag, the latter, being as we know, about to return to Berlin. They, also, were too much engrossed in conversation, to heed the traveler in a suit of grey, who rushed blindly past them and instantly turned toward the city.
When at last, panting for breath and wiping the perspiration from his brow, he reached his house, he was surprised to find the windows dark, but instantly said to himself: "She's with Reginchen." The delay annoyed him, it had never entered his mind that he should not find her at home. He hastily entered resolved to send the maid-servant for her, for he felt unable to see others to-day, even though they might be his dearest friends. But when he opened the door of his room, the girl came toward him with a light.
"Herr Doctor!" she exclaimed, almost dropping the lamp in her surprise. "Good gracious, to-day! And my mistress--"
"Where's my wife? At the next house, I suppose?"
"Preserve us! Gone away entirely, an hour ago--you must have met her at the railway station."
"At the station? What are you talking about, Kathrin? Where should she go--alone--without me--"
"She's gone to Berlin with Herr Feyertag, and she said she didn't know when she'd come back, but she'd write, and as the Herr Doctor wouldn't return for a week--"
"Gone? To Berlin?"
"Why yes, to see her father--and she made up her mind very suddenly. Herr Feyertag said it would be a good opportunity, because he was going himself this evening, but my mistress would not hear of such a thing at first, but the other visitor had scarcely gone--"
"Another visitor? Who--don't make me drag the words out of you so--"
"But how should I know who it was? I never saw the lady in my life, she didn't tell her name, and I could not hear what she said to my mistress. She was very beautiful, and very elegantly dressed; after she'd gone the room smelt of violets a long time, and my mistress paced up and down, looking very pale and talking to herself. And then when I brought her dinner she didn't touch a mouthful, and I didn't dare to ask her any questions; she said nothing to me, except that she'd made up her mind to go to Berlin. So about twilight she went out with a little satchel, and didn't even allow me to go with her to the station. When she'd gone, I felt very sad and anxious, though I didn't know why, and I was just going to bed--but what ails you, Herr Doctor? Shall I get you a glass of water?"
He had sunk down on the sofa and his eyes were closed as if a stroke of apoplexy had benumbed his brain.
When, after some time, he opened his eyes again, he saw the maid-servant, who had no idea what all this could mean, still standing helplessly in the middle of the room. "What are you doing here, Kathrin?" he said harshly. "Go to bed, leave me, I want nothing more to-day. No, no light. I can see well enough. Good night."
The faithful servant glided silently out of the room, and he sank back again in the corner of the sofa, helplessly giving himself up, in the loneliness and darkness, to his bitter anguish.
Chapter VIII
So he had lost her--his brave little wife, his good comrade, the friend who sympathized with all his moods and thoughts, all his feelings and wishes! The right hand must do without the left, the complete man had become a pitiful fragment, a crumbling mass of ruin.
The blow was so sudden, so unexpected, that for the first hour his bewilderment swallowed up all sense of pain. If anything earthly had ever seemed positive and secure from loss, it had been the possession of this heart. The secret fear (which sometimes blends with the joy of passionate love,) that exuberance of feeling may fall from its exaltation and undergo the common lot of change, he had never known. He had never toiled in anxiety and doubt to win the woman's love; it had been his long before he suspected it; why should he fancy that it could ever change! And now she had deserted him!
No feeling of reproach or bitterness, that she failed him now when he needed her more than ever, rose in his heart. He esteemed her too highly to believe her capable of any petty irritability, any ordinary feminine weakness, such as going "to make herself missed." If she could feel that her place was no longer beside him, she must have had good reasons for her belief, reasons which would bear the examination not only of her sorely tried heart, but of her reason. What they might be, well as he knew her, was not clear to him. Did she not know him too, and know he would never leave her? But he also knew whom she had seen, and that this visitor had been the cause of her sudden resolution he was perfectly convinced.
But however that might be--he had lost her. True--in the midst of his deep sorrow, a voice within whispered consolingly it was not possible, not conceivable that he could have lost her forever. If she had suspected that he would return to her to-day, how desolate the lonely house would seem, how sleepless the night would be--perhaps she would have remained. And it could have needed only one word, one look into each other's eyes, to have banished all the ghosts that had come between them. But even if she returned with him--he missed her to-day, and had been longing all day to see her, as he had never done before, and only endured the weary hours, because he knew the last would bring him to her arms.
In the midst of the bitterest grief and regret, his mind suddenly grew strangely clear and calm. For the strength of a noble love that really fills a man's heart, is such, that in its glorious fervor it consumes all other feelings, and even in the denial of the beloved object, the renunciation of the joy of her presence and reciprocating love, renders him happy whose being it pervades. All the happiness Edwin had enjoyed during these four years of quiet possession, seemed like a pale twilight in comparison with the radiant brightness that suddenly burst upon him in this separation. For the first time, the inmost depths of his being were pervaded by the feeling that he would give the whole world to call this woman his again.
With the rapturous timidity of a young man in love, but far distant from the object of his longing, and who meantime indemnifies himself for all deprivations by the boldness of his waking dreams, he conjured up the image of his beloved wife and murmured confusedly a thousand happy, sweet, and sorrowful words. He sued for her heart as if she had never granted him a kind word, and in imagination whispered his yearning love in her ear and waited with a throbbing heart for some sound from her lips that might seem to favor his suit. Her little work basket stood on the table before the sofa, where he still lay in the dark. Just as she had toyed with his book, his pen, he now took up one after another, the skeins of silk, silver thimble, and little scissors; the thimble he put on and pressed to his lips. It was such a consolation to him to be permitted to touch the things that had belonged to her, as if they were hostages she would ransom when he had her again. "To Berlin," he said suddenly to himself. "Why should we not go there?" He said "we," as if they were to set out on their journey the next morning together. For the moment he had entirely forgotten that she was not sitting beside him.
So he lay in his dark corner in a condition between sleeping and waking, while visions of all his past and future happiness successively rose before him. He was so absorbed in his reverie that he did not hear the noise in the street outside, a strange humming and buzzing, as if a great crowd had assembled, but were moving gently about with subdued voices and light steps, in order not to betray some secret design. It was about nine o'clock, an hour at which such a gathering, except in case of fire, was utterly unprecedented. Now the gleam of several wavering lights penetrated the dark room seemingly stationary before the house. Still the dreamer's attention was not aroused. Not until the street had again become perfectly silent and a duet began, softly sung by two voices without, did Edwin start up. What was that? Who was singing that beautiful, familiar melody, which he could never hear without deep emotion, since it had been the last greeting of Balder's friends, ere they left him to his eternal repose? Integer vitae--now it rose again, sung before his house by young, fresh voices, a greeting of life to the living. At first he listened without thinking how it happened that the old tune was now heard outside. Its melody fell so softly on his heart, and the words, with which he was perfectly familiar, seemed like the friendly consolation of a good spirit, closely allied to him. When the fourth verse began, he rose gently and approached the closed window. The street was crowded with people, whose faces were all turned toward him, though he was evidently not yet perceived against the dark background of the room for the expression of expectation, which rested on every countenance, did not alter as he approached. In the centre stood the singers, pupils belonging to the first classes of his school; his colleague, the singing-master, had stationed himself before the semi-circle, and by the light of some torches was beating time as intently as if some grand musical exhibition were taking place in a hall. Among the bystanders Edwin recognized many of the most prominent citizens in the place, the president of the workmen's society and several friends and neighbors, and could no longer doubt that the serenade was intended for him, a discovery, which even in his dark hiding place, made him blush to his temples.
What could have induced these good people, who as he well knew, were his friends, to express their feelings to him on this particular day, and in such a manner? Who had arranged this conspiracy so secretly, that even Franzelius, who would certainly have prepared him, had heard nothing of it? He was just resolving to choose the simplest way of solving the mystery, by going out and inquiring, when the door was cautiously opened and one of his younger colleagues, the teacher of history, with an exclamation of joy, entered the dark room. "So you are at home!" he cried, eagerly grasping Edwin's hand. "As the windows still remained dark, we were afraid that the beadle, who positively declared he saw you return by the evening train, might have been mistaken. It was known that you went away early this morning, and the serenade which had been appointed for this evening was of course deferred. But when you came back, there was no restraining them; all who were to take part were hastily assembled, and now nothing will save you; you must leave your hiding place and show yourself to the people, although so far as speech making is concerned, we can't under present circumstances stick to the original programme."
He then hastily told his astonished hearer, how all this had come to pass. Notwithstanding the secrecy with which the affair was managed, the rumor that Edwin was to be dismissed on account of his lecture before the workmen's society and the freethinking he had never denied, had spread itself among the pupils, who were greatly attached to him, and through this channel had reached the citizens and workmen. Instantly the thought occurred to them of averting the danger of losing their dear teacher and friend, by a solemn demonstration. If the city manifested its unanimous desire not to let Edwin go, those occupying high places would perhaps be startled. So an address had been secretly prepared, which was to be carried to Edwin escorted by a torchlight procession, and followed by a supper at the citizen's club. A partial knowledge of this had reached the ears of the principal of the school, who in his fear of offending both parties, could think of no wiser course than to telegraph to his superiors and beg them to adopt moderate measures. As soon as he had received an answer conceding his petition, he sent for the ringleaders among the pupils and told them no one had any intention of depriving them of their teacher, only that every thing must be avoided which would make an uproar and irritate the ecclesiastical authorities. There must be no torchlight procession nor any satirical addresses, either verbal or written; this was the condition of a mutual good understanding, which no one desired more than he, since he himself felt the highest esteem for the honored colleague in question.
"So we were obliged to content ourselves by merely singing a few songs to you, my dear friend," the young man concluded. "It is possible that even this course may destroy our pastor's rest. But why does he meddle with our affairs and disturb our little circle? It was hard enough for the lads to pledge themselves to do nothing more. Our little head boy had prepared a speech, which would have borne witness that he had read Thucydides to some purpose. And it seems as if I had never heard them sing so before!"
Edwin's only reply was to press his friend's hands; he then accompanied him into the street, where the last song was being sung. All present bared their heads, when they saw him, and seemed to expect a speech. But he only went up to the old music teacher, uttered a few cordial words, shook hands with him, and then embraced the head boy. "We know each other, my young friends," he said, "we will hold to each other in future, and I shall ever treasure it as one of my greatest joys, that you sang this particular song. I will tell you why another time. But here are other friends I must thank. Dear Herr Wolfhart," he said, addressing an old white-haired cabinet-maker, "you, too, have taken the trouble to come here to do me honor, although as I know, you are not a good walker. How shall I thank you for it--and you--and all of you! Well, I think the charming singing of our gallant lads will repay you for the trouble, better than I could do if I made a long speech. True, I might say a great deal to you all, but the street is not a suitable place for it, and we shall meet each other again at some more fitting opportunity. For your confidence in me and belief in my honest intentions, I thank you cordially; and now we will beg our singers to rejoice our hearts with a few more songs."
While the singing began again, many pressed around Edwin to shake hands with him and whisper how delighted they were to have this opportunity of showing their esteem for him and how the thought of losing him had alarmed them all. He accepted these proofs of friendship in his usual straight forward manner, said very little in reply, and escaped the most enthusiastic, as well as he could, by pretending to be completely absorbed in the music. But at heart he was strangely agitated and touched by this beautiful and affectionate ceremonial, and yet amid his joy he was deeply saddened by the thought that he must witness it without her, whose existence was most closely interwoven with his. He became more and more absorbed in this grief, which made him insensible to all that was passing around him. When the last notes had died in the air, the dark crowd silently melted away; the singers took leave of him, and those colleagues who ventured to share in the ovation, accompanied him to the door of the house with a last good night; he crossed the deserted threshold with a sense of sorrowful oppression, as if instead of this pleasurable event, some heavy grief had befallen him, and he felt actual horror at the thought that he must now remain through the long night alone with his despair.
Again he threw himself on the sofa, but the blissful certainty of happiness, in which he had just rested there, had fled. He had never felt more clearly, that he had lost the capacity for enjoying any pleasure, which she did not share with him, that his weal and woe were so indissolubly connected with this other self, that the mere thought of losing her palsied every aspiration of his soul.
Suddenly he fancied he heard a light foot coming along the street--now it ascended the steps--seemed to pause a moment at the door, which was ajar--and then to come through the dark entry--a footstep he knew so well! but no, impossible! She is far away or could his thoughts have had the power--? A hand is laid on the door knob; Edwin starts up with a beating heart, is about to say: "Who is there?" and prepares to reconcile himself to see a strange form enter, when the door opens, and Leah who has witnessed every thing that has just taken place before the house,--with what emotion! standing unnoticed among the crowd, not daring to approach!--appears, trembling from head to foot, like a criminal before her judge, on the threshold of the room she had left with such an agitated soul.
Another instant and she was clasped in his arms. As if beside himself in the exuberance of this unprecedented happiness, he raised the tottering form and carried, rather than led her to the sofa.
"Leah!" he exclaimed, "is it you?--you in bodily form clasped to my heart again? I hold, I feel you, come, speak one word, compose yourself--oh! you do not know what you have done for me in not going away!"
Meantime she had recovered from her bewilderment, but was still incapable of uttering a word. But he--all that he had just said in imagination, his newly awakened, passionate love, his wooing for her heart, the doubts and fears of a lover, he now poured forth aloud, while again and again seeking with his quivering lips her hands, her cheeks, the quiet mouth for which he had so ardently longed. "And you are here," he cried, "you have not fled from me, have not left a poor defenceless mortal alone in his need; no, my brave, faithful wife, now for the first time wholly mine and fairer and happier than ever, and all the idols which I had beside you, have crumbled into ruin forever."
"Oh Edwin," she whispered, "you make me both happy and miserable. You do not know, I am a bad wife--mean and cowardly, and not worthy to have you idolize me so. Oh! that this must be said now, but I must not allow any falsehood to come between us--you must see me as I am, even if you take back the treasure you have just poured into my lap."
"Speak out, if it must be told," he said with his brightest smile. "I am curious to see how far a person who has just saved another's life, can succeed in appearing odious."
He held her hands firmly clasped in his, but she glided down on the carpet before him, and on her knees, like a grievous sinner, confessed all that we already know. He let her talk on only interrupting now and then by an ironical word or saucy laugh. "Have you finished?" he asked, when she paused. She nodded, but made no effort to rise.
"Your sins are heavy," said he. "Above all, that of having given another man, even though he be a friend, to whom I do not grudge any good thing, the kiss which I myself so shamefully neglected to take with me, when I set out early this morning. However, in consideration that I too did not escape from the magic castle entirely unscathed, the only penance imposed upon you shall be, that in the future, if you want to kiss your own husband, you must never suppose that such folly does not beseem thinking beings, who have made a sensible marriage, but allow your heart every sweet absurdity--as in this hour. Leah, were there ever two happier mortals?"
"I fear I shall not survive the joy--" she murmured. Then withdrawing from his embrace she continued: "You are crushing me,--and you must be very gentle with me now--not for my own sake--Edwin, you do not yet know--I--I bear another life--"
This earth has joys that no heavenly joy can surpass, and which can be described by no human tongue.
Chapter IX
This night was succeeded by days, whose radiance and joy exceeded even the far famed happiness of the honeymoon. And in fact many drops of gall had mingled with the honey of our lovers' first days of wedlock; the daughter's sorrowful parting from her beloved father, whose future at that time seemed far more lonely and joyless, because there was not the faintest thought of a marriage with his first love; the young wife's many household cares, and for Edwin himself numerous annoyances in his new position, where the reputation of being a philosopher who believes neither in religion nor in God, had preceded him.
They had passed honestly through all troubles hand in hand. But much as these trials aided in strengthening the foundation upon which their home was to be built, the happy rapture of joy, the unrestrained, tumultuous delight with which young couples usually enter upon a new life, had been lacking in them. Now all this was bestowed in overflowing measure, when as Leah smilingly said, "they had really been married too long to be so childishly happy."
True, they did not allow, the outside world to see much of the treasure they had so suddenly found under their own hearthstone, and he who had entered the sitting room on the following day would hardly have taken the quiet young teacher, who was writing the first chapter of his philosophical work, and the young wife, who was painting a study in water colors from a bouquet of fresh roses, for two newly married people, in whose hearts amazement at all the wonders of happy love was still burning with a bright flame. But the first chapter did not progress very rapidly, or the bouquet bloom speedily on the paper. Every ten minutes the writer had something to ask the artist, and the question generally concerned some childish folly, such as is usually discussed gravely and thoroughly only in the nursery; or the artist, who had gone out of the room a moment, could not as usual, on returning, find the way directly back to her own window, but being obliged to pass the other, her dress, with all its appurtenances would catch on something which was no rose bush, but two arms extended toward her like a sign post, that would not let her go until she had paid a suitable toll for crossing the boundary line.
"Since we have discovered that we are in love with each other, like ordinary foolish mortals, we can no longer abide within the same four walls!" said Edwin laughing. "It is fortunate that we shall soon need a larger dwelling at any rate. At least the neighbors will not notice it, if we, from pure love, cannot continue beside each other."
He threw his pen aside, gave his arm to his little wife, and went to the printers with her. Reginchen received them with eyes sparkling with delight, but Reinhold, after yesterday's rare expenditure of eloquence, was as monosyllabic as if he were compelled to make up for his unprecedented lavishness by redoubled parsimony. But the quiet smile that gleamed through his bushy beard was enough to tell his friends how the sun of their happiness warmed his heart. They must come again in the evening he said; but Edwin instantly declined--they were going into the country, or to the shooting match, or somewhere--in short, they did not know what wise or foolish thing they might undertake, but two such frivolous young people could not enter into any positive engagement.
The remainder of this last week of vacation passed in the same way. They were only seen for very short periods, when they talked in a courteous, but abstracted manner, smiled at vacancy, and suddenly departed again, as if they had some important business to transact, and at hours when no staid citizen would think of going to walk, would be met on the wall of the town or in the neighboring forest, strolling along hand in hand, or sitting on some bench engaged in eager conversation or absorbed in happy silence.
Yet despite all this, the first chapter did make considerable progress--more than the picture of the bouquet of roses, since the original of the latter did not expand so quietly as Edwin's thoughts, which had long before been bound into a beautiful wreath. "I know now," said he, "why I never could write the book before. Certain things cannot be done by reason and calm judgment. A hazardous enterprise, like the final expression of thought, can be undertaken only when, like a somnambulist, we wander over the heights of life, intoxicated by the winged flight of a rapturous happiness, or the march of a grand, solemn fate, with a courage which helps us to surmount all heights and depths. No can can be so bold, except he who has shaken off all the burdens of mortality and escaped into eternity. When I woke last night, my darling, and gazed at your sleeping face--the moon was still shining brightly--you had a saucy smile on your lips, while your grave brow--will you believe, that a light suddenly dawned upon that passage in Kant, over which I have racked my brains so long? now my third chapter need not end with an interrogation point."
Thus passed the bright time of this most cloudless summer. On Sunday, the last day of vacation, they walked to a neighboring village and passed the little church, just as the service was over. A flood of melody from the organ floated solemnly through the open door, like an invisible stream, which was bearing the church-goers into the world again. The two lovers stood still and let the congregation pass slowly by. A portion of it was composed of peasants with their wives and children. Many residents of the city, who were spending the summer in the country, had joined it, principally ladies, who nodded to Leah as they passed, but owing to the religious views which the pair were known to entertain, did not approach them at the moment.
"The pastor of this village is famed for his toleration and oratorical talent," said Leah. "Does it not seem as if all these faces bore witness, that a beautiful and noble gospel has just been preached, a religion of love and charity? How differently the people look, when they come from our city church, where your zealous opponent enters the pulpit every Sunday with a heart full of hatred and desire for persecution! These people have really been benefited; they have sanctified their holiday, and we ought to thank them for secretly pitying us, because they do not suspect we are doing so too, in our own way."
"Certainly," replied Edwin, "so long as they confine themselves to secret pity, and do not allow their acts to be affected by it, so long as they do not force upon us the consciousness that we have other wants and satisfy them in a different way. For after all the ultimate and most common standard of a man's value is, whether he is capable of devotion or not, whether he can raise his thoughts above the dust of workday life and produce and worthily enjoy a holiday stillness. In this alone men differ and foolishly wrangle about how it happens. Those who only in dense crowds can succeed in remembering their common humanity, their universal weakness, their need, and all that binds them under the universal law, consider those persons arrogant and presumptuous, who can only feel the presence of the eternal powers, when communing with their own hearts in the deepest solitude, or with their most intimate friends. Nothing alien and fortuitous must touch me, if I am to approach what people have agreed to call God. The voice of a good man, who wants to obtrude upon me his little well meant passages from Scripture, the faces of his innocent hearers, to whom each word is a revelation, baffle and destroy my best efforts to rise above earthly appearances into the one and all. That which now speaks to us from the open house of God, is a feeling so strangely made up of memories of our childhood, universal philanthropy, the summer air, and the notes of the organ, that we gladly allow it to produce its effect upon us. But when we seriously reflect, it leads us away from, rather than into ourselves. It draws us toward natures which have little in common with us. We have often said, dearest, that mankind might be divided into two great classes, those who strive toward what is steadfast, calm, and limited, and those who never forget that every thing is fleeting, and are only satisfied when they themselves are in the current of the eternal stream. How could the piety of these two classes be the same? When the former pass from the restless, ever moving world, through a church door into their Sunday, where every thing has remained the same from time immemorial, the inexpressible appears before them confined within set forms, and for all new wants and sorrows the same consolations are ready, which have soothed their ancestors for a thousand years. How can it surprise us, that people who find their salvation in remaining ever the same and prefer to stifle certain instincts of the soul and mind, rather than be allured into the illimitable, cannot understand us, whose piety is rooted in the strength and boldness which in moments of enthusiasm, enable us to burst the barriers that confine us, in order through presentments and intuition, to grasp all space?"
"They do not know," said Leah gently, after a short pause, "how much more courage and humility it requires, to confess that we cannot recognize God, then to believe ourselves his pet children, in whose ears He whispers the secret of the world, and thereby relieves from all future care."
When they returned home in the evening and entered their cosy room, they espied a letter lying on the desk. "I don't know why it is," said Edwin, "but I fear this stranger which has crept in, will destroy the pleasure of the last hours of vacation."
"Don't read it until to-morrow," pleaded Leah.
But Edwin had already opened the letter, and a smaller note fell out. As Leah picked it up, he glanced at the signature of the large one. "Doctor Basler," he read, and his light tone instantly grew sad. "A letter from there--six closely written pages--strange, how far distant it seems, all that transpired there, as if years had intervened; so greatly does happiness harden us to the sorrows of others! And now once more it appears like yesterday. Poor creature, to be so quickly forgotten, even by your only friend! Perhaps though it may not contain a word about her. Come we will sit down on the sofa and read the letter together."
Leah had become perfectly silent. Without exactly concealing the note she had picked up, she held it in her hand, so that for the instant Edwin forgot it. They seated themselves near the lamp and read:
"Dear Sir and Friend!
"I should consider it my duty, even without the count's express command, to relate to my dear friend's son, the particulars of an event extremely sad in its nature, and which if it should reach him in its bare outlines through the medium of the press, would be doubly agitating.
"So--sine ambagibus--for so-called preparation in such cases only increases anxiety and dread, and men, dear Herr Doctor, know that fate strides rapidly--we have lost our beautiful young mistress, the countess, in a manner as sudden as it is distressing.
"You are already aware, that the writer of this letter did not enjoy any special favor or regard from the lady who has died so young. Yet I do not need to assure you, that the brevity of this account, which is garnished by no expression of feeling, is due solely to the haste imposed upon me by the pressure of circumstances, and not by any lack of sympathy in my master's misfortune. Such a thing would not only be inhuman in general, but ungrateful in particular, in so far as the noble lady at last did justice to the good will of her faithful servant and honored him with a priceless token of her confidence.
"To tell everything in due order, the countess, during the first few days after you left us, made no change in her mode of life, but on the third or fourth day--Monday, if I am not mistaken--remained shut up in her own room, allowing no one but her maid to attend her. On Thursday she again appeared at dinner, and to her husband's evident joy, seemed gayer and more cordial than was her habit in the family circle. The Italian tour of the prince and his wife, introduced the subject of traveling, and the countess jestingly remarked that she had become, so to speak, blase through descriptions of travel in most foreign countries, but if any thing could please her, it would be to go alone to the promised land. This remark was taken seriously, both by Count Gaston and the count himself, and the following day nothing was talked of except rides through the desert, Jordan water, the infidels, and the holy sepulchre. Therefore it afforded me special pleasure, that the countess should be the first to say: 'of course we must not leave the doctor--my insignificant self--at home.'
"Amid all this, it could not escape one familiar with the circumstances, that the noble lady's feelings toward her husband had softened, a fact which I could not help secretly attributing to your influence, my worthy friend. Old diagnosticians, like ourselves, are not deceived in such matters; the tone of the voice and the expression of the eyes, which accompanied even the most insignificant words, plainly showed me that her former harshness was softening, and I was already cherishing the brightest expectations of a complete reconciliation, expectations now unfortunately forever baffled, by this terrible catastrophe.
"A hunting party was arranged for Thursday, at which in addition to the members of the household, no one was present except the barons Thaddaeus and Matthaeus, who, however, were only spectators, as, since the accident to the fat landed-proprietor, though the wound is healing, the furrow made by the ball suppurating properly, and his general health admirable, they have vowed not to touch a gun, except in defence of their native land.
"I, as usual, remained at home, and did not even see the party ride away, but learned from the steward that Her Excellency had been particularly gay and blooming, and in unusually good spirits, so that the count really seemed to grow younger and the company moved off amid jests and laughter.
"The occupants of the castle were therefore the more alarmed, when, soon after noon, the noble party entered the courtyard very quietly at a walk, the countess lying in a carriage with a very pale face. Count Gaston riding beside her on horseback, and her husband on the box. We heard, that in the exuberance of her delight in hunting, Her Excellency had proposed a steeplechase to the gentlemen, in which her English chestnut horse instantly took the lead; but in leaping a high fence the animal unfortunately fell, and though the countess was apparently unhurt, the fright brought on a long fainting fit. The horse, which had broken one of its fore legs, was instantly relieved from its sufferings by a bullet from Count Gaston's pistol, at the express desire of its mistress, who, however, as soon as the deed was done, burst into violent sobs and afterwards did not utter a single word.
"Leaning on her husband's arm, she ascended the stairs, greeting the terrified servants only with a silent bend of the head and went at once to her own rooms, where she shut herself up for several hours, declaring that she was not hurt, and that she only needed rest. It was not a matter of surprise, that she did not consult me, as I have already told you, I was not in her favor, either as a physician or as a man. But to my no small surprise, about six o'clock I was called to the noble patient by the maid herself.
"I found her attired in an elegant neglige, sitting at a writing table, as if nothing had happened; she was unusually pale however, and her manner of receiving me was also surprising, for she was not in the habit of treating me with so much kindness and condescension. While sealing a letter and writing the address with a steady hand, she said in reply to my question about her health, that she was sure she had received no internal injury, but the dizziness which had recently attacked her--you remember how she stumbled the morning after your arrival, my dear sir--constantly hovered about her, and she wanted me to bleed her. At first I hesitated, from scientific reasons, which it would occupy too much space to explain here; but as I knew her, and knew that if I refused, she would send for the village barber, I did what she desired; it was the first time I had been permitted to touch her arm or render her any medical service. 'What do you think of my blood, Doctor?' she said, as it flowed into the silver basin. 'It is healthy isn't it? With such blood one might live to be a hundred years old!'
"When I put on the bandage, she expressly told me to fasten it securely, she was often restless in her sleep she said, and it might, easily become displaced. 'Well,' said I, 'in any case I will beg permission to watch through the night with the maid in the ante-room.' 'If you want me not to close my eyes,' she replied, 'my nerves are so irritated, that the slightest noise, even the mere vicinity of a man, keeps me awake.' No, if I wished to do her a favor, I would not omit the ride to the city I always took every Thursday, and I would carry with me to mail, the letter she had just written.
"You knew her, dear Herr Doctor, and therefore you know how difficult it would have been to have refused her any thing, especially a first service. So I bowed in silence, put the letter in my pocket, and gave her all sorts of directions for the night. Then she held out her hand, which I respectfully kissed, and at that moment it seemed as if no ill feeling had ever existed between us. 'Goodnight, dear Doctor'--those were the last words I ever heard her utter.
"In the hall below I met the count, who asked how I had found her. I told him, and also said I was going to the city--but did not mention the letter (although my motto has always been 'frankness and honesty,' there are cases where discretion becomes a duty.) The count positively forbade me to ride to the city. If the countess asked about the matter in the morning, he would be responsible for my disobedience. Then he went to her himself remained in her apartments about half an hour and returned in a mood I had scarcely ever remarked in him before--gentle and kind, as if he felt all would now be well. Dear me it was the first time for years, that he had been allowed to sit by her bedside for half an hour.
"Then night closed in. No one in the castle noticed anything unusual, the supper was a little more quiet, and there was no card playing afterwards, which greatly vexed the chevalier, who does not know how to amuse himself without it. At eleven the count again sent to inquire about his wife's health; the maid, who was to spend the night on the sofa in the adjoining room, replied that the countess seemed to be asleep, and she could not get in. Her Excellency had locked the door.
"So all went to bed. What was to be feared? The symptoms were not alarming; rest, sleep, and a Utile bleeding could only be beneficial.
"But I was roused from, my sleep at five o'clock in the morning by the maid, who was standing beside my bed. I must come up at once, she had been aroused by a strange moan, had knocked at the countess' door and called her and at last with the help of a servant, burst the lock; there lay the poor countess weltering in her blood, with the bandage stripped from her arm, unconscious but still alive.
"Dear friend, you may suppose that our trade hardens us, but such a sight!--the count like a madman--the grief of the whole household--and I stood by, whose duty it was to help, and saw that all was useless!
"Had I not been convinced that the bandage--but why should I speak of that--the change in her feelings for the previous few days, instantly removed the supposition that otherwise might have arisen--besides no amount of reasoning can restore her to life.
"Suddenly I thought of the letter, which I still had in my pocket, and I told the count about it, for all discretion was then superfluous. He hastily seized it, for a moment I thought he would open it to see if it contained any intimation that--but then he read the address aloud and was gentleman enough to return it to me; 'take care of it,' said he, 'and write him about--' here his voice failed, and he sank down in a chair beside the bed of his beautiful dead wife.
"Here is the letter entrusted to me; I feel sure it will furnish no new disclosures, none that could be new to me. I know what I know, and voices from the grave even, could not change my conviction.
"I have been very prolix, but you, as an intimate friend of the departed, will not find these details too minute. Remember me to your honored wife; I regret that there is so little prospect of a continuance of our recent acquaintanceship, but the count leaves in a few days for the East, and I accompany him. So with sincere regards, my dear friend, I remain,
"Yours
"Dr. Basler.
"Address to the castle as before; all correspondence will be forwarded!"
The note enclosed in the doctor's letter ran as follows:
"_You will be alarmed, my dear friend, that I already write you again. But fear nothing, it is for the last time, and means little more than the card inscribed P. P. C. which we leave with our friends before a long separation, I am going away on a journey, dear friend, far enough away to enable you to feel perfectly secure from any molestation on my part. How this has come about is a long story. Suffice it to say, that it is not envy of the laurels won by my beautiful fair-haired sister-in-law--I mean those she will undoubtedly win as a high-born, intellectual, and pious traveler--that induces me also to seek a change of air. If that which I breathe were but conducive to my health, if I could but sleep and wake, laugh and weep like other men and women, I certainly would not stir from the spot. But even my worst enemy could hardly fail to understand that matters can not go on any longer as they are; so I prefer to go. The 'promised land' has long allured me. I should have set out for it before, if I had not had much to expect, to hope, and to wait for, and been hindered by a multitude, as I now see, of very superfluous scruples, which are at least successfully conquered._
"Do you know that since I saw you I have made the acquaintance of your dear wife? A very, very pleasant acquaintance; if I had only made it a few years sooner, it might have been very useful to me. Well, even now it is not too late to rejoice, that you have what you need, the happiness you desire, in such a noble, wise, and loving life companion. Give my kindest remembrances to her. In my incognito I may have behaved strangely. But the idea of assuming it flashed upon me so suddenly, and, with the help of my faithful maid, it was carried so quickly into execution, that I had no time to consider what role I should play. So every thing was done on the spur of the moment. To be sure, I had at first a vague idea of proposing that you should accompany me on the great journey. But one glance into your home quickly told me, that you must be happiest there, that your 'promised land' is the room, where your desk and the artist table of your wife stand so quietly and peacefully side by side.
"Farewell, 'dear friend!' I should like to talk with you still longer--to philosophize as we used to call it; but what would be the use? Or has any sage ever given a satisfactory answer to the question, of how the commandment that the sins of the fathers must be visited on the children, can be made to harmonize with the idea of a just government of the world? Why should a freak of nature, an abnormal creation, be expected to fulfil all the grave normal demands we are justified in making upon ordinary human beings? Or why are we usually punished by the gratification of our wishes, and allowed to perceive what we ought to have desired, only when it cannot be attained?
"A fool, you know, can propound more questions than ten philosophers can answer. Perhaps I shall receive special enlightenment in the 'promised land.' My memory is stored with much that is beautiful; even many a trial that I have experienced in the grey twilight of this strange, cold, inhospitable world, was not borne wholly without recompense. I would not give up even my sorrows, for the dull happiness of commonplace wiseacres, who in their limited sphere think all things perfectly natural and cling closely to their clod.
"Farewell, my dear friend. Let me hope that you will always wherever I may be, remember me with as much sympathy as the great and pure happiness you enjoy will allow, and that you will wish a pleasant journey to
"Toinette."
Chapter X
Two winters and two summers have passed since the evening when the honeymoon happiness of the newly united pair was so deeply shadowed. The blow, however, left very different traces on each. While Edwin, after the first sudden pang, almost felt a satisfaction in knowing that the sad confusion of this noble life was ended by a heroic death, Leah was assailed by a strange melancholy, which caused her constantly to reflect whether she herself was not partly to blame for this terrible death. If she had not stood between them, if, in that first and only interview, she had treated the well known stranger differently,--! And again, even if the living woman would have had no further power over Edwin's heart, how the image of this wonderful creature, who had turned away from a lost life with such calm dignity now transfigured by death, must haunt his memory and overshadow every bodily form. Then a secret pride rebelled against the thought, that this voluntary departure might have been a favor bestowed upon, a sacrifice made for her; as if the generous Toinette had said to herself: "so long as I breathe, this woman cannot be sure of her happiness and peace; one of us must step aside."
She carefully concealed this restless succession of thoughts from Edwin, and as his profession and the now steady labor on his book gave him enough to do, he did not continually watch Leah, and attributed certain dark moods, which did not wholly escape his notice, to her changed condition and the anxiety natural to one about for the first time to become a mother. In fact, the fulfilment of this most ardent wish appeared to instantly transform her nature, and when the child lay in its cradle, all shadows of the past seemed driven from the house by perpetual sunlight. Thus a second year passed away.
When we again meet our friends it is once more vacation; but this time we do not find them among mountains and valleys, or within the cosy precincts of their new home. Leah, with pardonable maternal pride, unable to resist her own desires and the pressing invitation of her parents, has taken her rosy little girl, "who is already so sensible and gives no trouble at all," with her to Berlin. They arrived yesterday evening at the pretty little house in the Thiergarten suburb, where papa Koenig, since he left the lagune, has built his modest but comfortable nest. Here, amid the green trees and under the care of his faithful companion, the old gentleman has fairly blossomed again, and the pleasure of embracing his daughter and grandchild has even made him strip off the chains, with which in the shape of cloths, bandages, and felt shoes, the gout usually makes his feet helpless. He came running up to the carriage, far in advance of his much more active and still charming wife, and would not be prevented from carrying the sleeping infant, with all its pillows and wrappings through the garden into the house, and then the rest of the day ran up and down stairs unweariedly, to ask for the hundredth time if the children were comfortable and wanted nothing, though his clever wife had provided every thing in the most loving manner. "Oh! it is so pleasant to come home again," Leah exclaimed, her eyes full of tears, and with grateful affection threw herself into the arms of the new mother, whom she had secretly dreaded to meet.
Edwin was also very gay. Meeting with these excellent people had done him good. But in the depths of his soul there still lingered a gentle melancholy, a quiet depression, which even the following morning, with all its sunlight and the twittering of the birds before the windows, could not dispel. Leah instantly understood his feelings, when, without waiting for the early breakfast, he prepared to go out.
"Go, dearest," she said. "It must be done. I would accompany you, but the baby is not yet dressed. Remember me to all."
She kissed him and waving her hand, looked after him as he walked through the garden into the park. She knew that he would have no rest, until he had revisited the places around which his dearest memories clustered. He did not, however, as she anticipated, first turn his steps toward the cemetery where Balder reposed. He had not even taken any special interest in adorning the grave or providing a headstone, and when long ago Leah had asked him about the inscription--her father had quietly attended to every thing else--he had looked at her with an almost bewildered expression, and merely replied: "whatever you think best will suit me entirely," and then he had not gone there again. He confessed that his dead never seemed farther from him, than when he was near their graves, where he had never seen them while alive, and that the beloved images there paled to shadows among other shadows. But now, when in the quiet morning sunlight, he wandered across the deserted Thiergarten, it suddenly seemed even in broad daylight, as if a glorified spirit, that wore Balder's features, were walking close beside him, till he closed his eyes in order not to destroy the waking dream. All the events of the past, all the love and pleasure of their young lives together crowded upon his mind, and as he involuntarily stretched out his hand, for one moment he actually again experienced the feeling he had had in former days, when he had gently stroked his brother's soft hair.
Absorbed in these thoughts, he reached the neighborhood where the park stopped and where new streets and houses, which had sprung from the ground as if by magic, reminded him how many years he had been away. He knew that Marquard lived here, nay he even fancied that at one of the lofty windows, supported by caryatides, he recognized a face which reminded him of Adele.
He turned away, that he might not be recognized. He did not desire to meet old acquaintances this first morning. He soon reached the bank of the Spree, turned to the right, and walked down along the quay, watching the sparkling water. He thought how strange it was, that the only thing in which he perceived no alteration, was that which was constantly moving. While the firm brick and mortar had not resisted the inroads of time, and house after house seemed to have been renovated, the old Spree, on the contrary, showed the same face, the floating houses on it had kept the form and color, and their occupants the costume and customs they had had on the day, when with the little artist, he first made his Canaletto studies.
He knew that he would find new buildings erected over the lagune and on the site of the Venetian palace, and yet something attracted him first to this part of the Schiffbauerdamm. But when he approached the spot and saw every trace of the old scene effaced, a wide gateway in place of the canal, and on the timber yard a tall, sombre building with glittering windows, he stood still, overpowered by a sudden emotion of sadness, and feeling as if he had found, on visiting the spot where he had buried a treasure only a heap of valueless stones. Then he could not help smiling at the vehemence of his feeling. "So it is that we cling to tangible things!" he said to himself. "We may fancy ourselves ever so secure in our idealism, the senses demand their share. What was this wretched old barrack to me! And now, since I can no longer see it with my bodily eyes, I feel as if barbarians had ransacked a temple which contained the most beautiful images and where I had often been disposed to devotion."
He slowly turned toward Friedrichstrasse, intending to go to the house in Dorotheenstrasse, look around the old "tun," and then deliver the messages Reginchen and Franzelius had sent to their mother. They could send no remembrances to the father; the worthy shoemaker was no longer among the living. The last autumn had torn this modest leaf from the tree of humanity, before it showed any signs of withering. The latter part of his life, in which, following Heinrich Mohr's counsel, he had eagerly striven for progress in his own sphere of action and studied the questions relating to the culture of humanity in the closest proximity, had been the most enjoyable and richest of his life. To be sure, he was at first very angry that "mother" could not be induced to accompany him on his journeys of discovery through Berlin. But by degrees he seemed to become reconciled to this obstinacy, nay he confessed to his friends in the society, that the full depths of certain abysses of modern civilization can be measured only when men venture into them "without ladies." As he talked continually about these "abysses," certain wags endeavored to persuade him to deliver a lecture upon them. For a long time he modestly refused, but at last consented, and to the great astonishment of his faithful wife, who saw her husband become an author in his old age, he spent many weeks in filling a few sheets with extremely strange, extraordinarily worded sentences, in which he forgot eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, and even his workshop, but was as happy as a student composing his first love song in honor of a lady, to whom he had never spoken a word. When he delivered this wonderful composition, under the title of "studies of social abysses," before one of the informal meetings, as a sort of rehearsal, he was rewarded for his trouble by great and universal merriment, a form of applause, which as he had scattered through it the spice of a few puns and anecdotes, seemed very flattering. To be sure, the president, for very plausible reasons, did not think the subject of the lecture judicious for a large audience, but thanked the assiduous shoe-maker in the warmest manner for the interesting communication, so that the old man, in an exalted mood which he had never experienced before, ordered champagne, and broke the neck of more than one bottle to the welfare of progress and the education of the people.
The following morning he was found dead in his bed from a stroke of apoplexy, a triumphant smile still resting on his lips, which seemed to ask the survivors whether his being so suddenly snatched away, when a wider influence seemed about to be allotted to him, might not perhaps have been destined to show that he possessed more than mediocre ability.
But Edwin was not thinking of this worthy friend, as he walked down the long street, and plucking up his courage, turned the corner. Here the narrow little house with the steep roof and bright flesh colored paint had formerly appeared at a distance. To-day--what has happened, that his eyes at first failed to distinguish it? Had it been unwilling to outlast its old master? No, it was still standing in its place, but its appearance was completely transformed. The cheerful pink paint, which contrasted too strongly with the feelings of its present owner, had disappeared under a gloomy stone grey, with black stripes, so that it seemed to be in mourning for its old master. The sign over the shop door had been altered also, for a melancholy change had taken place in the firm, whose name now read as follows: "Gottfried Feyertag's Widow & Co.," which appendix of course meant none other than George, the head journeyman.
All the windows on the first floor were wide open. In former days such a thing had never been known to happen even in midsummer. But the little old couple had left this peaceful dwelling several years ago, to occupy that still more quiet last lodging, where protected from every draught of air, we rest on our earthly laurels. Edwin had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with these fellow lodgers, yet he now felt as if they too had been a necessary part of his life, and that not to find them again would be a real sorrow.
He approached the house with hesitating feet, ascended the few door steps and went into the entry. Through the glass panes of the inner door he could look into the shop, where Madame Feyertag, completely attired in black with a large crepe cap, sat in the corner behind the show case, sewing. He could not make up his mind to enter and deliver Reginchen's message; an iron band seemed to compress his chest, he feared that he should be unable to control his words. He glided cautiously past with noiseless steps and opened the door leading into the courtyard. He had intended to go up to the tun, an uncontrollable longing drew him toward the old room. Every thing here was the same; the bare, grey back building, the arbor overgrown with bean vines, the shade loving plants, the acacia tree, which it is true was now wholly dead, and did not even put forth one puny leaf--but what was that lying among the dry branches like a little heap of last winter's snow? A cat? Was it she herself, Balder's old friend, sunning her weary limbs on this lofty perch, or was it a descendant, which bore such a striking resemblance to its ancestress? He could not decide, his eyes grew dim with tears and his feet seemed paralysed; in spite of his longing, he could not cross the courtyard and mount the steep stairs. So he stood leaning against the door post with closed eyes. Just at that moment voices became audible in the workshop, and starting as if he feared to be caught here like a thief, he tore himself away and with a beating heart fled back into the street.
For a long time he walked on like a drunken man. He took no heed of the people who passed by, the glittering shops, the throng of carriages, the motley stir and bustle of life around him. But by degrees the painful agitation of his soul subsided, isolated words recurred to his mind involuntarily blended together, before he remembered that they composed an old song of Balder's, which suddenly echoed from the depths of his memory and soothed him with its mysterious magic:
Soul how thou roamest! On wings of the wind, Through high and through low, Thy way thou dost find.
Though thou art poor, What riches are thine! Ceaselessly restless What calmness divine!
Free above all, Close, close thou art bound; Soul, say, where hast thou Thy resting place found?
Among stars and suns, Thy wing circleth wide, Yet with rapture, Mid violet beds doth abide.
Where the lightning is cradled Thy home thou hast made; To the cloud's ample dwelling As well hast thou strayed.
Yet in narrowest circle, By joy art possessed, And dost tenderly, timidly Pensively rest.
As the ivy that creepeth By lowly abodes, On a thousand weak tendrils Thou climb'st to the Gods.
Where memory glancing The cleft ruins through, As the sun to the vine Giveth warm life anew.
Murmuring the last words aloud just as he turned into the Unter den Linden, he suddenly felt his arm seized, and turning saw a face which had been far from his thoughts.
The old Livonian baron, the enthusiastic connoisseur and friend of art, who had formerly helped the worthy zaunkoenig to his short-lived dignity of court painter, stood before him wearing an expression of the greatest delight.
"Well," he cried, shaking Edwin's hand with boyish impetuosity, "this is what I call 'talking of a wolf and seeing the tip of his tail.' Only yesterday evening I was speaking of you for at least two hours, first condemning and then defending you when others undertook to condemn; and to-day, my dear fellow, you appear before me just as I was considering whether I should go to your father-in-law, to get your address; you see I wanted to write to you. I don't know how the worthy Herr Zaunkoenig feels toward me, since that stupid piece of business; for gloriously as he behaved in the matter, just as I expected him to do, I was at any rate mixed up in it, and the wager--"
"You ought to know him better, my dear Baron," said Edwin, interrupting the torrent of words. "True, he is by no means such a weak dove as not to have been very much enraged against your prince at the first moment of discovery, but it was less from offended personal dignity, than indignation at the cold blooded frivolity, with which such noble Maecenas' treat an insignificant artist. But then he grew quiet and thoughtful, collected his studies and the few pictures he had finished, and spread them before him. When I asked what he was doing, he replied: 'I am disgusting myself with my work. Let us be just: these things have emanated from an aberration of the artistic instinct.' The next day they had disappeared, and as I afterwards learned, were nailed up in a chest, loaded with brick-bats, and sunk in the lagune."
"Oh! oh! oh!" said the old man, shaking his head, "then we have really deprived him of the greatest pleasure of his life. I shall never look at the Luini I won from the prince, without a pang of conscience. Oh! oh!"
"Cheer up, dear Baron. You have only helped to prove his favorite saying, that to those who love God all things are for the best. His passion for art really emerged again, rejuvenated and vigorous, from the lagune where he had expected to bury it. Since he has lived in the suburbs, where in spite of his new and easier circumstances, he continues his old modest mode of life and industriously pursues his engraving, he has, it is true, made no attempt to return to his former 'specialty.' He says that now, when he daily sees the green fields, he perceives for the first time the full extent of the frivolous boldness, with which he daubed these wonders of God on his miserable canvass. To make amends, since what is denied always charms the soul and excites the fancy, he has how set up a new kind of genre picture; he paints views of the Spree and the green ditches, bridges, and steps leading to the water, not without skill, as it seems to me. You may suppose that he is more successful in reproducing the straight lines and grey tone, than the succulent weeds and bright sky of his former zaunkoenigs. If you would come out to his house--he has just finished something--"
"Col sommo piacere! With the greatest pleasure. You take a hundred pound weight from my heart. But what was I going to say--what were we talking about just now? My head is growing old, friend, and nothing makes one more confused and forgetful, than intercourse with silent pictures."
"You were saying that you had been scolding about me yesterday for two hours. I am curious--"
"Yes, that was it: your book was the subject of conversation, everybody is talking about it now, so that I was at last ashamed of not having read it, though I don't exactly feel compelled to be familiar with all the new books that are talked about, not even those written by my friends. But, my dear fellow, what have you done?"
"Nothing very bad, I hope. At the worst only written a bad book."
"Something far worse, my friend--a good book, a book which in all main points is perfectly right and has the great majority of thinking men on its side. You laugh. Oh! these young people! You think it is easy to be in the right in this world. As if there could be any thing more repulsive, uncomfortable, and contrary to police regulations, than a person who looks neither to the right nor left, knows neither caution nor discretion, but calls things by their right names. Such a fool-hardy man had better go into the Theban wilderness and deliver his wisdom to the stones; but if he supposes that he will be tolerated in a society founded upon mutual cloaking and palliation of faults, feigned respect for rotten rubbish, and the superficial varnish coated over old cracks, where people do not even have the courage to lay aside the humbug of false names in the catalogues of museums, let alone calling other idols by their right names--you see, my friend, gall enters into the construction of my sentences, and I no longer know how I began. But this I do know, that if you acknowledge the authorship of such books, you will never have any prospect of making a career in our dear native land, and I sincerely regret it."
"I thank you for this regret," replied Edwin with a quiet smile. "Nay I even share it in a certain sense, though not on my own account! I am happy where I am, and offices and titles have as little charm for me, as a heap of money, which at any rate if I were a little more careful, I might procure by lecturing or writing. But in the interest of public welfare, the health and morality of our political life, I can only think with regret how far we still are, from possessing the much praised and much scouted freedom of thought. So long as the patriarchal delusion still exists, that the state has the right or even the duty, of watching over the theoretical opinions of its members, while only their acts belong to its tribunal, we shall not emerge from a dreamy and trifling minority. And this rests upon a deeper error, against which my whole book is directed, although it apparently turns upon an objectless pyschological problem--the error that metaphysics and morality are closely connected, nay are in a constant interchange of influence."
"Freedom of thought!" cried the eager old gentleman, standing still and baring his shinging bald head, as if his hat heated it, "as if it would be of any special consequence to you to obtain, this miserable acquisition, which you possess as much as the Spaniards themselves did in the darkest ages. What you want and will not obtain for a long time, is freedom to teach, freedom to transplant your thoughts into other heads, not merely by books, which will only be read by a small number, but by lectures in public halls, just as your colleague instils into his hearers the condensed milk of piety carefully tested and proved harmless. But you are wrong, my dear friend, in asking this, and that is why I blamed you, because I regret that by a premature expression of your secret thoughts, you render your own work difficult, if not impossible. Dear me, the field of philosophy is so terribly barren, people would be glad to foster and cherish a new power; but if it deals such blows to the right and left, loosens with its roots the soil on which tame kitchen vegetables have hitherto peacefully slept their nourishing plant-sleep--you have too clear a head, dear Herr Doctor, not to understand that the time has not yet come when we can need you among us."
"Not yet come, certainly, but it is near, nearer perhaps than those in high places suppose. Or how long do you think it will be, before shame at the incompleteness and artificially fostered self-deception, which is palliated by pedagogical considerations, will flush the faces of the leaders of the public, and compel them to openly acknowledge what has long since been secretly perceived and recognized? It is true that hitherto we have had other tasks to solve, questions of existence, of defence in peril, and then of our power and honor. But after we have advanced tolerably far in these, do you suppose that we, who have to support our moral dignity before other nations, will continue in this traditional track, and thereby allow the noblest intellectual possessions to be endangered? For all the canonized myths and metaphysical legends have also produced an ethical effect, not according to the measure of their truth, but by the degree of veracity in the author and hearer of the composition. And must the degree of veracity no longer be the standard of the allowableness and moral power of a lesson? Or is it not a great immorality, out of mere external considerations relating to the political education of children, to give us for the corner stone of our happiness, fairy tales and legends, which all cultivated minds believe as little, as the Greeks of Aristotle's time credited the fables of Homer and Hesiod. Of course we must not pour away the dirty water before we have fresh; but who will answer for it that we shall ever draw from the deepest, purest fountain? And who would not quench his thirst with the wild fruit that grows by the way side, rather than drink the water, which in spite of all filtering, has constantly become darker and more slimy? Oh! my dear friend, I see in your face the reply you wish to make, that the great masses are not so particular, and are satisfied with the foul stream in which weak minded theologians have washed their dirty linen for centuries, while we educated people could support ourselves on the fruits that philosophy and natural philosophy pluck from the tree of knowledge. I, too, once held the same aristocratic notions. But I can no longer reconcile myself to them. For--let alone every thing else--I do not believe that it would be dangerous for the masses, if they were educated to the truth instead of to a conventional fable, such as our histories of dogmas offer them. But even if certain village and city churches should become still more empty, than is now the case in consequence of the deadness and constantly decreasing reality in our forms of worship, has the state duties to perform only toward the uneducated? Can it, without danger, lose in the eyes of the educated that credit for veracity, which it might so easily maintain, if it did not take sides, and venture to decide questions of conscience by state institutions? Has it not also responsibilities toward the great strata between the educated and the simple people, those who will be strengthened and almost confirmed in their own frivolity by all these partly known, partly unknown things? The evil of shallowness and secularization in its worst sense existing in these circle, the preponderance of thoughtless pleasure, the whole despicable materialism of our times--do you really suppose, my friend, that all this is to be remedied by throwing up a dam composed of the crumbling ruins of a faith, which for centuries the elements have shaken, disintegrated, and scarcely left one stone upon another? I cannot believe it, even if I desired to do so, and the patching and mending of the tottering structure seems to me more wicked and dangerous, than erecting a new dam--or at least measuring and marking out the foundations, on which our children's children may put up the structure."
"Our children's children already? Oh! you sanguine mortal!"
"You are right. Who can tell? And yet how quickly intellectual transitions take place now, in comparison with former days, when the intercourse between minds was effected with so much greater difficulty! Has a century elapsed since the time when Lessing's Nathan was a fact, a challenge, a single burning need of that great heart, until now, when his timid gospel of toleration for all religions has become a commonplace, and honest toleration even of the irreligious ripened to the silent need of countless numbers?"
"I hope your book will be introduced into German seminaries, but at any rate Nathan will be turned into flesh and blood, so that a Jew may be permitted, without hesitation, to read logic and metaphysics before grown men."
"I hope the latter also," replied Edwin smiling. "The former would be a sad token of the small progress science had made in a hundred years. One of us will then I hope be a conquered station."
"No," exclaimed the old man with a solemnity which moved Edwin strangely, and seizing both his companion's hands, while he looked him steadily in the eyes, he continued: "I must tell you here, though it probably will not signify much from an old enthusiast in art, in the new building of which you speak, even though it too, after thousands of years will become mouldy and tottering, and have to be rebuilt, the foundation will remain, and among other mementoes of these days, which will deserve to be placed in the corner stone, your book will find a place. I bought it and wrote on the first page averse of the old poet enlightened by divine frenzy the poet Holderlin:
"With shield divine, oh genius of the brave, Desert not innocence, but swift to save Ever be nigh; inspire and win to thee The heart of youth with joy of victory. Arouse, conquer, punish; do not delay, The majesty of truth secure alway. Till time's mysterious cradle shall release, The child of Heaven, eternal peace.
"And may this peace be with you, my dear fellow. Farewell."
He embraced his silent companion and in spite of the throng of pedestrians, kissed him on both cheeks, then hastily turned the nearest street corner and vanished from Edwin's sight.
LAST CHAPTER.
This conversation echoed in Edwin's soul like a strong and solemn harmony, as he continued his walk along the Unter den Linden.
But he was not to be permitted to return to his family in this exalted mood. As he approached the Brandenbourg Gate, he saw a light elegant carriage, drawn by two beautiful horses, pass through the central portal and turn up the Unter den Linden. A gentleman with a carefully trimmed beard, and regular, but shallow, vacant features, drove the fiery animals, occasionally addressing a word to the young lady, who sat beside him, leaning negligently back and casting smiling glances at the passers by from under her pink parasol. Edwin had just noticed her face in a photographer's show window, and beneath it the name of a well known ballet dancer. Behind this couple, with his arms folded across his breast in true jockey insolence, sat a tall, fair lad, in a green livery embroidered with silver, with a stiff shirt collar reaching to his ears, and the round glassy eyes in his beardless, boyish face, were upturned with a saucy, yet wearied expression to the sky.
Neither of the three had noticed the unpretending pedestrian, who remained rooted to the spot, as if he could not believe his eyes. A feeling of repugnance, such as one experiences when rudely awakened from enthusiastic dreams to a prosaic reality, where hopeless commonplace or shallow every day life prevails or occupies the largest place, overpowered Edwin and accompanied him as he walked through the shady paths of the Thiergarten to his father-in-law's house. Even there the painful impression did not instantly leave him. He was grave and silent, and as the others knew, or fancied they knew, where he had been that morning, they respected his feelings and did not trouble him with questions.
In the afternoon he asked Leah to drive with him. She was unwilling to leave the child, though it was well taken care of by the grandmother and nurse, for in spite of her philosophy, she was the most anxious and unreasonably careful of mothers. But she felt that Edwin needed to be alone with her, and instantly prepared to accompany him.
They had driven quite a distance in the direction of Charlottenburg, when he first broke the silence, and holding her hand in his, and now and then gently pressing it, he told her the events and experiences of his morning. When he mentioned his meeting with the count, he said: "I do not understand why it moved me so deeply. To return from the pilgrimage to the 'Promised Land,' and then fill the empty seat in the carriage with such a creature--many of the most trivial natures could not bring their hearts to it. But I did not know him, was not aware what a 'perfect gentleman' he was, to be able to console himself by 'noble passions' for what he might have suffered in the higher emotions. And yet I instantly felt as if I owed her memory a silent ceremonial, to conciliate her insulted shade. The Catholics have the clever invention of their silent masses. We must help ourselves in our own way."
Meantime having reached the entrance to the park of Charlottenburg they alighted from the carriage. Silence surrounded them; the atmosphere was balmy, and the earth bathed in sunshine; not a leaf was stirring, and scarce a bubble rose to the surface of the carp pond as a frog leaped croaking from the hot grass into the water. There are hours when even nature seems to be gazing at her reflection, conscious of her beauty, as if in a dream.
The two, who walked arm in arm through the shaded avenue, felt the magic of the midsummer noon in their own souls, which grew more and more agitated, as if secret fountains were welling up within them without overflowing at their lips. Thus silent, they at last reached the mausoleum, which in the bright sunlight, looked specially grave and solemn under the dark trees.
"I wanted to come here," said Edwin. "It was on this spot that she said to me: 'There is but one real nobility: to be true to ourselves.' The poor, brave, free-born heart--it has been true to its nobility, faithful unto death. Let us enter the little temple, where beauty is high priestess and conquers death by perpetuating the forms of noble humanity. But we know that for that, marble is not necessary; for have not we in our grief, engraved the transfigured image indefaceably upon our hearts till we ourselves shall enter eternity?"
They passed into the silent chamber. When, after a considerable lapse of time, they again emerged into the open air, the eyes of both were dim with tears. They paused in the next deserted avenue, and as they silently embraced each other, Leah gave free course to her grief.
"Weep your sorrow away, love," said Edwin at last. "Ought we to feel ashamed of the best gift mother nature has bestowed upon us? With what strange foresight she has arranged that the fountain of tears flows whenever the greatest joys or the bitterest sorrows fall upon our hearts! And is it not the same with all that is tragic in human destiny? Are not the weal and woe of all lives inseparably interwoven and blended in supreme moments into an emotion which lifts us above our petty selves, and makes us smile at grief when we are too awed by its solemnity to rejoice? Oh! dearest, a world in which we are permitted to achieve such a triumph over fate, and not only over our own fate but over that of our loved ones also, in which the tragic element is glorified by a sense of beauty, and in the midst of our horror of death we are thrilled with the comprehension of the highest earthly bliss, till only tears can relieve our hearts--such a world is not utterly cheerless. Come! Let us return to life, to our child, to our friends. What does my old friend Catullus say?"
"Beloved, let us live and love!"
END.
WORTHINGTON COMPANY'S
CATALOGUE
of Standard Books that every one ought to have; they are all handsome and attractive, and will be a valuable addition to any one's library.
* * * * *
NEW EDITION, NEW PLATES.
ALICE ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND.--12mo. $1.25.
Above are the most charming fairy tales of the 19th Century. Exquisitely amusing, deliciously illustrated. Nursery classics translated into most of the languages of Europe.
AYTOUN.--Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. By Wm. E. Aytoun, late Prof. of Literature and Belles-Lettres in Univ. of Edinburgh, and Editor of Blackwood's Magazine. 16mo, extra cloth, $1.00.
BAILEY, PHILIP JAMES.--Festus: A Poem. (New Aldine Edition.) 16mo, vellum cloth, $1.00; do., do., three-quarter calf, extra, $2.50; do., do., flexible, or tree-calf, $3.50.
This great dramatic poem exhibits a soul gifted, tried, buffeted, beguiled, stricken, purified, redeemed, pardoned, and triumphant. It is interspersed with delightful songs. Has been praised by Bulwer, Thackeray and Tennyson as a remarkable poem of great beauty. The present edition is very handsome, the type is large and elegant, the paper is excellent, and the steel engravings are of exceeding grace.
BON GAULTIER'S BOOK OF BALLADS. By W. E. Aytoun and Theodore Martin. A new edition, including "Firmilian." Cloth, $1.00.
In all his poems Prof. Aytoun has put forth a sustained power and beauty of expression which have placed him in the foremost rank of the poets of his time. "His Lays" have all the historic truth and force of Macaulay, expressing noble thought by a delineation of generous and lofty natures stated with fluency, vigour and movement. His ballad themes are selected from striking incidents and from stirring scenes of Scottish history, and he has thrown over them the light of an imagination at once picturesque and powerful.
BURTON (Dr. J. Hill).--The Book Hunter, with Memoir and Index. New Edition, With Portrait and Engraving of Interior of Library. Crown 8vo, Roxburgh style, $3.00.
Burton's "Book Hunter" is indispensable to every owner of a library; it will be found of incalculable aid in classifying, studying, collecting and the preservation of books. It abounds in reminiscences of noted Bibliophiles and Book Hunters. We offer in this edition a volume that for general excellence of typography and binding will delight the heart of every book hunter.
CAMPBELL (Sir George, M. P.).--White and Black. The Outcome of a Visit to the United States. By Sir George Campbell, M.P. Being a Bird's-eye View of the Management of the Colored Races, with the Contents of my Journal. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, $1.75.
We have in this work the views of a prominent Englishman on the relative positions occupied by the Black and White Races in the United States. Several suggestions and opinions are given toward solving the Race Problem that will be read with lively interest by all who desire the caste question amicably settled.
CARROLL (Lewis).--Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. With fifty illustrations by John Tenniel. 1 vol. 12mo. $1.25.
CHILD'S OWN BOOK OF FAIRY TALES.--Containing Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp, Beauty and the Beast, Children in the Wood, Goody Two-Shoes, Gulliver, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack and the Beanstalk, Puss in Boots, Robin Hood, Tom Thumb, White Cat, Yellow Dwarf, and others. With upwards of one hundred illustrations, after designs by eminent American artists. Square 16mo, cloth. $1.50.
The best collection of the famous old-fashioned Fairy Tales contained in any one volume, many of which can only be found in this edition.
CHILD'S TREASURY OF FAIRY TALES. For Little Folks. Containing The Six Swans, Little Hunch-Back, Hop-O-My Thumb, Blanch and Rosalind, Dummling and the Toad, Fortunio, The Fox's Brush, The Three Wishes, Cinderella, Whittington and his Cat, and many others. Printed with extra large type. Illustrated with 60 engravings by the American artists, Twaites and others. Cloth, black and gold, square 16mo, $1.50.
This edition of the more popular and best known Fairy Tales is especially commended for the profusion and beauty of its illustrations.
CHILDREN'S BIBLE PICTURE AND STORY BOOK.--With sixty full-page illustrations. Square 16mo, beautifully printed and bound in cloth extra, $1.50.
A real beautiful book--one that ought to be placed into the hands of all, even the youngest children. It is a complete history of the principal events or stories in the Old and New Testaments, written in remarkably clear, simple, unaffected language, extremely well illustrated. It brings out into bold relief the singular charm of the book of books, and leads on to the study of the scriptures.
CRAIG'S DICTIONARY.--A Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language. Based upon the Works of Webster, Worcester, etc., etc. Containing 30,000 Words and 750 Engravings. Edited by C. H. Craig, LL.D. 12mo, cloth, $1.00.
"Every one ought to own a dictionary,"----and the low price at which we offer this edition places it within the reach of all. It is, undoubtedly, the best cheap dictionary made: it contains all the words in general every-day use, with their most standard definitions and pronunciations.
CRAIG (A.R., M.A.). YOUR LUCK'S IN YOUR HAND; or, The Science of Modern Palmistry, with some Account of the Gypsies. Numerous illustrations. 12mo, cloth, gilt extra, $1.25.
A recent revival of interest in this fascinating study has certainly proven the fact that Prof. Craig's Palmistry is the most complete and satisfactory work on the subject extant--it shows the careful work of a master hand. Should there be a single "doubting Thomas" who does not believe "your luck's in your hand," let him read the convincing arguments in this work and be converted.
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLE ILLUSTRATIONS, being a storehouse of Similes, Allegories, and Anecdotes. Edited by Rev. R. Newton, D.D. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.
A treasury of spiritual riches borrowed from nature, art, history, biography, anecdote, and simile, by Christian authors of all countries and ages. A book full of wisdom and of the happiest illustrations of points of doctrine and morals.
CYCLOPAEDIA OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES: Botany, Zoology, Mineralogy, Geology, Astronomy, Geometry, Mathematics, Mechanics, Electricity, Chemistry, etc., etc. Illustrated with over 3,000 wood engravings, 1 vol., 4to, cloth extra, $6.00; sheep, $7.50; or, in half morocco extra, $10.00.
This popular Encyclopaedia is more than a first-class book of reference, it is a library of popular scientific treatises each one complete in itself, which places into the hands of the reader the means to procure for himself a thorough technical self-education. The several topics are handled with a view of a thorough instruction of these particular branches of knowledge, and all statements are precise and scientifically accurate.
DANA (R. H., Jr.). Two Years Before the Mast, 1 vol., 12mo, $1.50.
One of the most fascinating and instructive narratives of the sea ever written for young folks. The reader's sympathies are enlisted with the hero from first to last, but the hardships and hair-breadth escapes he meets with would prevent most boys from emulating his example.
DUFFERIN.--Letters from High Latitudes. A Yacht Voyage to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen. By his Excellency the Earl of Dufferin, Governor-General of the Dominion of Canada. Authorized edition. With portrait and several illustrations. 8vo, cloth extra, $1.50.
The titled author has given us in this work a narrative of a voyage replete with incident in the yacht "Foam." His impressions of the countries and people visited in the far North are written in a fresh and original style, in the purest English, and the account of the whole voyage is as pleasing and interesting as a work of fiction.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING'S POEMS.--The most satisfactory American edition issued, printed from excellent type on paper of superior quality, with introductory essay by Henry T. Tuckerman. 3 vols., 8vo, gilt tops, $5.25; half calf extra, $10.50.
The highest place among modern poetesses must be claimed for Mrs. Browning. In purity, loftiness of sentiment, feeling and in intellectual power she is excelled only by Tennyson, whose works it is evident she had carefully studied. Nearly all her poems bear the impress of deep and sometimes melancholy thought, but show a high and fervid imagination. Her Sonnets from the Portuguese, are as passionate as Shakespeare's, all eminently beautiful. Of her Aurora Leigh, Ruskin said "that is the greatest poem which this century has produced in any language."
FESTUS.--A Poem by Philip James Bailey. With choice steel plates, by Hammett Billings. Beautifully printed. 4to, cloth, gilt, $3.00; do., do., full gilt and gilt edges, $5.00.
GAUTIER (Theophile). One of Cleopatra's Nights and Other Fantastic Stories. Translated from the French by Lafcadio Hearn. 8vo, cloth extra, gilt top, $1.75.
A brilliant and intensely fascinating collection of stories from the pen of the inimitable Gautier, they are excellent specimens of his work in his brightest and happiest vein; the scenes are audaciously limned, and distinguished for their conscientious fidelity to nature.
GRAY.--The works of Thomas Gray, in Prose and Verse. Edited by Edmund Goose, Lecturer of English Literature at the University of Cambridge. With portraits, fac-similes, etc. 4 vols., crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $6.00; half calf, $12.00.
"Every lover of English literature will welcome the works of Gray, the author of the immortal 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,' from the hands of an editor so accomplished as Mr. Gosse. His competency for the task has been known for some time to students of poetry, and the present edition is now considered to be the most careful and complete ever published."--London Athenaeum.
GUNNING (William D.).--Life History of Our Planet. Illustrated with 80 illustrations by Mary Gunning. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt extra, $1.50.
From this work, more so than any other, we probably gain a clearer idea of the almost incredible changes Nature has wrought on our planet and still more wonderful changes we may expect in the future. We are given several interesting pages--with illustrations--on the mammoth creatures of pre-historic times, whose mummified bones alone remain to tell their story. It should be read by every one who desires to know more about the world we live in.
HARDY (Lady Duffus). Through Cities and Prairie Lands. A most interesting book of Travels in America, 1 vol., crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $1.75.
Recollections of a most pleasant trip made by this distinguished lady through America. She has many warm words for the kind manner in which she was treated, and altogether the work is a most pleasing and pronounced contrast to the average hastily written English impressions of America.
HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF FREEMASONRY, as Connected with Ancient Norse Guilds, and the Oriental and Mediaeval Building Fraternities, to which is added the Legend of Prince Edward, etc., by George F. Fort. A New Edition. 1 vol., 8vo, $1.75.
This work is the result of years of labor on the part of the author, whose original and persistent design has been to arrive at the truth, and, at the same time, supply a want long felt by members of the Masonic Fraternity, as well as the uninitiated. That he has fully accomplished his purpose is demonstrated by the fact that it is now looked upon as the most standard and authentic history of Freemasonry in existence.
HOW? or, Spare Hours Made Profitable for Boys and Girls. By Kennedy Holbrook. Profusely illustrated by the author. 8vo, cloth, gilt, $2.00. do., do., full gilt extra, $2.50.
The most interesting and instructive work of the kind ever issued. By the help of their plainly worded and fully illustrated instructions, any bright boy or girl may devise unlimited entertainment and fashion many acceptable and useful presents for playmates and friends. The directions are for working with wood, paper, chemicals and paints, with knife, pencil, brush and scissors, and for the performance of sleight-of-hand tricks.
JERROLD (Blanchard). Days with Great Authors. Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold. Selections from their Works, and Biographical Sketches and Personal Reminiscences. Numerous illustrations. 8vo, cloth, gilt extra, $2.00.
To the hosts of admirers of these great authors this work will prove of absorbing interest, as it contains many reminiscences never before in print. Considerable space has also been devoted to their public speeches, and short, characteristic selections are given from their best works.
LA FONTAINE'S FABLES.--Translated from the French by Elizur Wright, Jr. Illustrations by Grandville. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, $1.50.
La Fontaine's Fables--there is magic as well as music in the name; they have been deservedly popular for years, and they will be read with ever increasing pleasure by young and old, "as long as the world rolls round." This is the only moderate priced translation of these charming fables published.
LE BRUN (Madame Vigee).--Souvenirs of. With a steel portrait, from an original painting by the author. 2 vols. in 1, crown 8vo, red cloth, gilt top, $1.75.
"An amusing book, which contains a great deal that is new and strange, and many anecdotes which are always entertaining." It is written in a reminiscent and chatty style, and relates many "choice tid-bits" of the distinguished historical personages with whom the authoress was acquainted.
LOUDON'S COTTAGE, FARM AND VILLA Architecture and Furniture.--Containing numerous Designs for Dwellings, from the Villa to the Cottage and the Farm, each design accompanied by analytical and critical remarks. Illustrated by upwards of 2,000 engravings. In one very thick vol., 8vo, $7.50.
One of the most useful books on architecture ever issued. Gives valuable hints to anyone contemplating building either villas, cottages, or outhouses, and may save thoughtful and practical men hundreds of dollars.
MACAULAY'S LAYS of Ancient Rome.--With all the antique illustrations and steel portrait. Beautifully printed. 4to, cloth, extra gilt, $3.50; do., do., full gilt and gilt edges, $5.00; do., do., 12mo, cloth extra, $1.00.
When the famous historian issued these lays, which have since become classics, it was a literary surprise, for no one thought that he was also a poet of such high degree. His poetry is the rythmical outflow of a vigorous and affluent writer, given to splendor of diction and imagery in his flowing prose. Stedman said of this volume, "the lays have to me a charm, and to almost every healthy young mind are an immediate delight."
NAPOLEON.--Las Cases' Napoleon. Memoirs of the Life, Exile, and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon. By the Count de Las Cases, with 8 steel portraits, maps, and illustrations. 4 vols., 12 mo, 400 pages each, cloth, $5.00; half calf extra, $10.00.
With his son the Count devoted himself at St. Helena to the care of the Emperor and passed his evenings in recording his remarks. Commenting in a letter to Lucian Bonaparte on the treatment to which Napoleon was subjected, he was arrested by the English authorities and sent away and imprisoned.
NAPOLEON.--O'Meara's Napoleon in Exile; or A Voice from St. Helena. Opinions and Reflections of Napoleon on the Most Important Events in his Life and Government in his own words. By Barry E. O'Meara, his late Surgeon. Portrait of Napoleon, after Delaroche, and a view of St. Helena, both on steel. 2 vols., 12mo, cloth, $2.50; half calf extra, $5.00.
Mr. O'Meara's works contains a body of the most interesting and valuable information--information the accuracy of which stands unimpeached by any attacks, made against its author. The details in Las Cases' work and those of Mr. O'Meara mutually support each other.
NAPIER'S PENINSULA WAR.--The History of the War in the Peninsula. By Major-Gen. Sir W. F. P. Napier. With 55 maps and plans of battles, 5 portraits on steel, and a complete index. An elegant Library Edition. 5 vols., 8vo, $7.50; half calf, $18.00.
Acknowledged to be the most valuable record of that war which England waged against the power of Napoleon. The most ample testimony has been borne to the accuracy of the historian's statements, and to the diligence and acuteness with which he has collected his materials.
NELL GWYN, The Story of, and the Sayings of Charles the Second, related and collated by Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. With fine portrait and 11 extra engravings, 8vo, cloth extra, $3.50.
An exceedingly interesting memoir relating to the times of Charles II. Pepys in writing about Nell Gwyn called her "Pretty witty Nell," was always delighted to see her, and constantly praises her excellent acting. Cunningham states that had the King lived he would have created her Countess of Greenwich, and his dying wish to his brother, afterwards James II., was: "Do not let poor Nelly starve."
PICTURESQUE IRELAND, Descriptive and Historical.--Comprising 50 full-page engravings on steel of its picturesque scenery, remarkable antiquities and present aspects, from original drawings by W. H. Bartlett, and a complete account of its cities, towns, mountains, waters, ancient monuments, and modern structures by Markinfield Addey. 2 vols., 4to, cloth extra, gilt edges, $10.00; or in half morocco extra, gilt edges, $20.00.
These two handsome volumes will make the reader better acquainted with the picturesque features of the "Emerald Isle" than any work that has ever preceded it. Only by a combination of both pen and pencil was it possible to give an idea of the beauty of Ireland, its marvelous lakes, mountains and valleys, romantic streams, mysterious round towers, giant's causeway, waterfalls, stately castles, magnificent religious and public edifices, etc., etc.
PURITANS, History of the Puritans and Pilgrim Fathers. By Professor Stowell and Daniel Wilson, F.S.A. In 1 vol., 8vo, cloth, $1.75.
Stowell and Wilson's history is acknowledged everywhere to be the best and most exhaustive history of the Pilgrim fathers. A full and complete account of the rise of the Puritans under the Tudors to their settlement in New England, which is herein given, makes this a most valuable work of reference and study.
STAUFFER (Frank H.). The Queer, The Quaint, The Quizzical. A Cabinet for the Curious. With full index. 8vo, cloth extra, $1.75.
"Oddities and wonders, Antiquities and blunders, And omens dire; Strange customs, cranks and freaks, With philosophy in streaks"
are all to be found between the covers of this book. It certainly is the completest collection of odd and curious events ever made.
TAINE. H. A.--History of English Literature. Translated by H. Van Laun, with Introductory Essay and Notes by R. H. Stoddard. 4 handsome volumes. Cloth, white labels, $7.50.
It is the book on the subject, the more wonderful that, written by a French critic, it should be accepted by English-speaking people--everywhere--as the authority on the literature of their own language, universally prized for its clearness, terseness and comprehensiveness, and yet as interesting as a work of fiction.
THE APOCRYPHAL NEW TESTAMENT, Being all the Gospels, Epistles, and Other Pieces now extant attributed in the First Centuries to Jesus Christ, His Apostles and their Companions, and not included in the New Testament by its compilers. Translated from the original tongues, and now first collected into one volume. With numerous quaint illustrations, 1 vol., 8vo, cloth, red edges, $1.25.
As a literary curiosity this work has excited the greatest attention all over the Christian world. There is nothing in it contradictory of those truths which have been accepted as revealed, but every chapter and verse goes to confirm the undoubted writings of the apostles and evangelists.
WALT WHITMAN.--Leaves of Grass. Original edition. Year 85 of the State. Foolscap 8vo, cloth extra, $3.75.
We offer here the Fine Original Edition of Whitman's Poems. Recognition of the wonderful power and charm in his rugged verse has been freely given by all who appreciate the grand and beautiful in poetry. The "Good, Gray Poet" is gaining admirers daily; his Leaves of Grass is destined to live forever as a representative classic of a bold and rythmic style of versification peculiarly his own.
WATERS (Robert). William Shakespeare Portrayed by Himself. A Revelation of the Poet in the Career and Character of one of his own Dramatic Heroes. By Robert Waters, 1 vol., $1.25.
In this able and exceedingly interesting book on Shakespeare, the author shows how the great poet has revealed himself, his life, and his character, besides refuting conclusively the ciphers of Donnelly and other Baconian theories. Altogether the best life of Shakespeare, remarkably well written in vigorous English. "An original, wholesome, scholarly, and plainly sincere book on Shakespeare. It is after all something new about Shakespeare, which Lowell feared could not be said."--E. C. Stedman.
WILSON'S NOCTES AMBROSIANAE.--The Noctes Ambrosianae, by Prof. Wilson, J. G. Lockhart, James Hogg, and Dr. Maginn. A revised edition, with Steel Portraits, and Memoirs of the authors, and copiously annotated by R. Shelton Mackenzie, D.C.L. 6 vols., crown 8vo, including "Christopher North," A Memoir of Prof. Wilson, from family papers and other sources. By his daughter, Mrs. Gordon. Cloth $9.00; half calf $18.00.
This series of imaginary conversations were supposed to have taken place between Christopher North (Wilson), the Ettrick Sheperd (Hogg) and others in the parlour of a tavern kept by one Ambrose in Edinburgh, hence the title Noctes Ambrosianae. A too literal interpretation is not to be given to the scene of these festivities, however, but the true Ambrose's must be looked for only in the realms of the imagination. It is one of the most curious and original works in the English language, a most singular and delightful outpouring of criticism, politics and descriptions of feeling, character and scenery of verse and prose, of eloquence and especially of wild fun. It breathes the very essence of the Bacchanalian revel of clever men. Prof. Wilson is a writer of the most ardent and enthusiastic genius whose eloquence is as the rush of mighty waters.
YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF THE REBELLION. By William M. Thayer. Illustrated. 4 vols., 12mo, cloth, $5.00.
Fort Sumter to Roanoke Island. | Murfreesboro' to Fort Pillow. Roanoke Island to Murfreesboro'. | Fort Pillow to the End.
A faithful history of the late war, which by its attractive presentation is especially adapted to youthful readers. Its narrative is full of dash and adventure, the military events are recited vividly and thrillingly, it is interspersed with individual heroism, suffering and daring, and on the whole renders a better account of the war and its causes than any other book that we are acquainted with. The author's style is perfect at all times, either delicate, pathetic, or picturesque, but always in simple language that any young reader can fully understand.
CLASSICS FOR CHILDREN.
AESOP'S FABLES. New edition, profusely illustrated. 8vo, cloth, gilt, $2.00; do., do., full gilt extra, $2.50.
AEsop, born in the sixth century before Christ, while traveling through Greece, recited himself his home-truths, which in the shape of fables are full of wisdom that will teach and live forever. He did not collect or write them down, but they were easily remembered, became universally popular and were passed on from mouth to mouth, and from generation to generation.
ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES.--By Hans Christian Andersen. New plates, large, clear type, handsomely printed and illustrated. 12mo, cloth, black and gold, $2.00; do., do., full gilt, $2.50.
The most charming fairy tales of the world, full of earnestness, humor, pathos, and fresh inventiveness, written in a style of carefully studied simplicity. They have become familiar to children in all countries.
ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS.--New edition. Edited by E. O. Chapman. Profusely illustrated. 8vo, cloth extra, $2.00; do., do., full gilt, $2.50.
A very pleasing edition, with most attractive illustrations of the oriental fairyland over which Queen Shehrazad reigns. It is now and always will remain a classic.
BARON MUNCHAUSEN.--The Life, Travels, and Extraordinary Adventures of. By the Last of his Family. 1 vol., cloth, gilt, $2.00; do., do., full gilt extra, $2.50.
The original Munchausen was an officer in the Russian service, who served against the Turks. He told the most extravagant stories about the campaign till his fancy completely got the better of his memory, and he believed his own extravagant fictions. The wit and humor of these tales are simply delightful.
BOY'S OWN BOOK.--A Complete Encyclopaedia of all Athletic, Scientific, Recreative, Out-door and In-door Exercises and Diversions. Beautifully illustrated. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt, $1.50.
The best present anyone can make to bright boys. One ought always bear in mind the adage "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The word koenig signifies "king."]
[Footnote 2: The German word for "fence" is zaun, and zaun-koenig means "hedge-sparrow."--Tr.]
[Footnote 3: Commission paid a person who arranges marriages. Tr.]
[Footnote 4: Fee paid a marriage broker.]
[Footnote 5: The equivalent for "mitten." Tr.]
[Footnote 6: Epsom salts.]
[Footnote 7: Truffles are found by means of dogs which have an unusually keen scent.]
[Footnote 8: A less ceremonious form of the pronoun you.]
[Footnote 9: The German phrase for being hen-pecked.]