Only a Girl Part 15

"Uncle," she said with childish emphasis, "will you help me to be as clever and to learn as much as a man? Will you teach me the sciences which you said would make men so strong?"

"Yes," replied Leuthold with seeming enthusiasm, "I will, indeed."

"Promise me, dear uncle."

"I promise you with all my heart that I will teach you as no woman has ever been taught before,--that I will guide and direct you until you have soared far above the rest of your s.e.x. But you must be diligent, and discard all desires but the desire of knowledge."

"Oh, I will, dearest uncle. Why should I not? What else can I wish for?

I do not want to play with other children,--they laugh at me. I am too ugly and grave for them. I will live alone, and learn with you; and one day, when I know more than they, I will shame them. Oh, that will be fine!"

"But I hope, my child, that you will remember your promise, and not tell any one what I have said to you to-night."

"Not any one? not even Herr Heim?"

"Not for the world. If I should find that you cannot hold your tongue, I will teach you nothing, and you will be as ignorant as those who laugh at you."

"No, uncle, I will never tell anything; I will not, indeed!" Ernestine cried, "But tell me one thing,--are there really no angels, then?"

"Angels!" and her uncle smiled. "Of what use has been all that I have just said to you, if you can seriously ask such a question?"

"Then I have no guardian angel!" said the child, and her eyes filled with tears. "And I loved my guardian angel so dearly!"

"My child," replied Leuthold, "you are your own guardian angel. Your own strong mind will shield you from all danger far better than any such imaginary creature with wings."

Ernestine was silent. She must take care of herself, then. But she felt so weak and broken; how should she be supported unless she could lean upon some higher power? No guardian angel, no father, no mother, not even their spirits! It seemed to her that she was suddenly standing alone, without prop or stay, upon a rocky peak, with a yawning abyss just at her feet. The moment would come when she must fall headlong.

Then there arose before her the last hope of the soul in utter misery,--G.o.d! He was all in all,--Father and guardian spirit; He was love; He would not forsake her. Though all else that she had believed in crumbled to dust, He still remained; she would cling to Him with redoubled fervour. She looked up at her uncle; should she tell him her thoughts? No! She could not speak that sacred name before Leuthold; she dreaded the smile she had seen in the morning,--she could not tell why.

Her uncle then spoke, and the last drop of poison fell into her soul.

"We have in ourselves everything that modern religion has created outside of ourselves," he began. "Angels, devils, G.o.d--" Ernestine started and shrank,--"these are all only personifications of our good and evil qualities. It is only the boundless self-conceit of mankind that imagines that the grain of reason that distinguishes them from the brutes is something entirely beyond the power of nature to produce,--something supernatural, immortal, divine,--and that there must be, enthroned somewhere above the universe, an omnipotent being, who is in direct communication with us and has nothing to do but to busy himself with our very important personal affairs! This belief in G.o.d, with all its apparent humility and submission, is the veriest offspring of the vanity and arrogance of mankind, and all worship of G.o.d, my child, is, in fact, only worship of self. True humility is to acknowledge that we are no 'emanation from the Divine Essence,' as theosophists phrase it, but only nature's masterpieces, and that we can claim no higher destiny than that common to the myriad forms of being that bear their part in the universal whole."

Ernestine had sunk back among her pillows,--she felt annihilated; there was no longer any G.o.d for her!

Her uncle arose, for two o'clock had just been tolled from the belfry of the village church. He did not fail to observe the terrible impression that his words had made upon Ernestine. He took her hand; she withdrew it from his grasp. He smiled. "You are sorry, are you not, to give up everything that your childish mind has believed in so firmly? I can easily understand it. But, Ernestine, your powers of mind are too great to allow you to find consolation for any length of time in such delusions. Be sure that sooner or later you would have extricated yourself from such bondage, as the expanding flower throws off the confining hull. You have been ill, and your physical weakness has depressed your mental energy; but, when you are well and strong again, you will rejoice proudly in the consciousness that you are a free, irresponsible being, not dependent upon the will and the doubtful justice of a fancied Jehovah. Study yourself, my child; in yourself lies your future. Believe in yourself, and plant your hopes deeply in your faith in yourself. I will leave you now to sleep; and I am sure that to-morrow I shall find you a little philosopher."

Long after her uncle had left the room and Rieka had retired upon tiptoe to bed in the adjoining apartment, fully convinced that her charge was sleeping, Ernestine was wide awake. She lay perfectly motionless, as if shattered in every limb. She stirred for the first time when Rieka had extinguished the light, so that no ray came through the open door. Then the child drew a deep breath, and stretched her arms out into the darkness as if to clasp the forms of her vanished faith; but her arms encountered only the empty air. There was no more pitiable creature upon earth than she at that moment. What is left for a child without father or mother, who has lost her guardian angel and her G.o.d? She is a bird fallen from the nest, stripped by cruelty of its wings and left living on the ground. The child's foreboding soul, precociously matured by misfortune, felt the entire weight of her desolation; and she hid her face in the pillow, that Rieka might not hear the convulsive sobs wrung from the depths of her misery. The tears which she poured forth for her vanished G.o.d were all that her uncle had left her,--the only prayer that she was capable of. She longed to pray--but could not in words. "He does not hear me! He does not live!"

she cried to herself; and the hot tears burst forth again, and she wept in agony. And, as she wept, her heart grew soft and tender, and as the Crucified, after he had been laid in the tomb, was present invisibly among his disciples, so the G.o.d who had just been buried away from her mind came to life again in her heart; she did not hear nor see him, but she felt his presence, and it gave her strength to pray. She kneeled in her bed, folded her hands, and cried inwardly: "Dear G.o.d, let me keep my belief in Thee--if Thou art and canst hear me--" --that terrible "if" intruded. She paused to ponder upon it. And then there was an end to her fervent prayer, and G.o.d vanished again.

Thus the struggle between faith and doubt continued feverishly, and her soul thirsted for love as did her parched lips for water. Where was there a kind, gentle hand to offer her a cooling draught, and with it the kiss that should refresh her thirsty soul,--such a hand as only a mother has? Ernestine gazed out into the darkness. Her breath came in gasps, her heart beat audibly, but no more kindly tears came to her burning eyes. "O G.o.d! my G.o.d! why hast thou forsaken me?" was the last moan of her tortured heart; and then she sank into a feverish slumber.

CHAPTER VII.

DEPARTURE.

The autumnal gales had stripped the leaves from the trees; the tall firs in the forest, bordering the s.p.a.cious brown fields of the Hartwich estate, were the only green on the landscape. Over the cheerless desert plain wandered a lonely little figure, pale and sad as Heine's Last Fairy. Ernestine had so far recovered that she was once more able to brave the autumn wind. She extended her arms, and could not help imagining that they might become wings, that would bear her far, far aloft. She knew it could never really be so; but the thought was so delightful! Up, up, far away from the earth,--it was so sad upon the earth. She was a stranger here, and she felt that her home must be elsewhere. In heaven? Oh, there was no heaven; but in the air--at least, in the air. And she ran on--ran as fast as she could--and her heart throbbed with excitement as the wind whistled in her ears and tossed her clothes about, and her hair.

An insatiable yearning--she knew not for what--had driven her out of the house--she knew not whither. There was nothing for her to crave for, and yet she could not help it. She thought she should die of longing! She wished she could dissolve into foam, like the little mermaid, that the daughters of the air might bear her aloft into endless s.p.a.ce! And she stood still and gazed up into the gray clouds, and took a long breath. There was no longer anything there for her to aspire to, and she had not yet learned to look within. One vast void around and above her, and forth into this immense void she was driven!

At last she reached the woods, and stood beneath the dark firs, in whose boughs the wind was wildly roaring. It was the last time that she should stand thus among these familiar scenes, for on the following day she was to set out with her uncle for the south, that she might escape the northern winter. She was sorry, for she clung to her home, bleak as it had been. She must have something to cling to! She had looked forward with pleasure to the ice and snow; the glittering form of the snow-queen in the fairy book--the creature of Andersen's Northern fancy--had transfigured winter for her. Like little Kay, she had lost all delight in life, and, like him, she was perplexed in spirit at the word "eternity." But she could not help loving the winter and the solitude of her retired home. She walked on fearlessly, beneath the whistling of the wind, deeper and deeper into the forest, until, without knowing how, she emerged on the other side, and stood under the oak where she had first seen Johannes. The bough, now entirely dead, which had broken beneath her when she was trying to escape from him, still hung there. There, too, was the spot where he had given her the book--the wonderful book--that had peopled her fancy with such lovely forms. And yet that interview with Johannes seemed in her memory far more like enchantment than any fairy-tale, and she stood still, sunk in a reverie, until a furious blast of wind tore at the boughs of the majestic tree as if it longed to tear it down and scatter its fragments through the forest. With a crash, the broken bough, only attached hitherto to the trunk by a slender hold, was hurled to the ground, and the wind wailed on through the bare branches in the forest depths.

Ernestine looked up startled. The boughs rustled and creaked, and the scared ravens flew croaking hither and thither. Again the blast swept howling across the plain, slowly, but with a mighty swell in its roar, towards the wood, and again it stormed and raved in its first fury about the isolated oak, which trembled and shook to its centre. But Ernestine was startled only for an instant; she was used to the blasts of a northern October, and she took delight in this wild might of nature. It was almost as if she herself were shaking the tree, and splitting its branches with her own hands. The exultation of a t.i.tan in the breast of a creature woven as it were out of moonlight and lily-leaves! Only a divinely-related spirit could have had such thoughts in so delicate a form,--a spirit that fraternized with the elements, and, in an intoxication of delight, forgot the frail casket in which it was confined.

Singing strange, wild songs, the child, with her wonted agility, climbed the tree that had grown so dear to her, and cradled herself exultingly amid its tossing branches. She ascended to the topmost boughs, and gazed far over forest and plain; and the more the creaking branches were tossed to and fro as she clung to them, the wilder grew her delight. It was almost flying--to hover, thus hidden, above the earth! She kissed the bough by which she held, and as she saw the young branches breaking here and there beneath her, and the hurricane raged so that it almost took away her breath, she looked up with inspired eyes, and whispered involuntarily, "It is the breath of G.o.d!" Suddenly she distinguished a sound as of human footsteps, and a shout came up through the roar of the blast. She thought of the handsome stranger youth! Could it be he--come to take her down from the tree? An inexplicable mixture of joy and dread took possession of her. Was it he? Would he stretch out his arms to her again? But it was not he. A chill struck to her heart, and a shade gathered over the landscape. It was her uncle! "Ernestine," he called to her, "thoughtless child! How you terrify me! Running to the woods and climbing trees in such a storm! You might kill yourself! Come down, I entreat you!"

"Let me stay here, uncle; I like it so much!" Ernestine begged.

"I must seriously desire you to come with me. What would people say if I allowed you to be out in such weather? Be good enough to do as I tell you."

Ernestine cast one more silent glance over her beloved forest, and then, with a saddened face, began to descend. When she reached the spot where the bough had been broken, and whence Johannes had rescued her, she broke off a couple of withered leaves, hid them in her dress, and slipped down the trunk lightly as a shadow. She turned to her uncle.

All her delight had vanished; she was upon the earth once more, and her uncle's cold, keen eye disenchanted her utterly. Her look was downcast; she felt almost ashamed. If he knew that she had just been thinking of G.o.d, he would despise her. But why could she believe in G.o.d again while she was up there, and not when she was down here with her uncle?

She walked on without a word by Leuthold's side, glancing neither to the right nor the left, never heeding how the wind was well-nigh tearing her dress from her back. She did not want to fly any more,--she longed for nothing;--when her uncle was by, she was ashamed of every emotion. When she came to the place where the path leading to her home diverged from the road to the village, she asked permission of Leuthold to go and say farewell at the parsonage. After some hesitation, he granted it, and went on alone. Ernestine hurried along the well-known road. The village children shouted after her, "Halloo, there goes Hartwich's Tina,--proud Tina, with the whey face!" She paid no heed to them,--she felt herself above the jeers of such creatures. With a beating heart she reached the parsonage; then she suddenly stood still.

What did she want here? To bid good-by to the pastor and his wife! But if the good old man should admonish her to love and fear G.o.d, as he was so apt to do? Or if he should ask her if she believed in G.o.d? What should she,--what could she answer him? Could she, doubter, apostate that she was, enter the presence of the servant of G.o.d without placing herself at the bar of judgment, or without lying? She stood like a penitent, not daring to enter the door which had been so often flung open to her. Twice she put her hand upon the bell-handle and did not pull it. She knew that the old man would be grieved if she went away without bidding him farewell; but she also knew that he would be still more deeply pained could he guess at her present state of mind. Perhaps he might despise her then; she could not bear that; and, just as she was ashamed of her faith when her uncle was with her, she was now ashamed of her doubts. How often had the pastor told her it was a sin to doubt! she had committed--nay, was now committing--this sin. No, her guilty conscience would not let her meet his eye, or kiss the soft, gently folded hands of his wife. She slipped past the house, so that no one could see her, and went into the grave-yard, where it was quiet and lonely and she could hide her guilty little heart upon her parents'

graves. She knelt down beside them, and longed for tears to relieve her; but no blessing arose from the graves over which no spirits hovered, but which covered, as her uncle Leuthold had told her, nothing but bones. And yet she so longed to do penance for all her doubts. "If I could only have faith again this minute, and pray G.o.d to forgive me, I could go in and see the pastor," she thought. She looked around her, not knowing what to do;--there was the church, and the doors were open.

She would go into the house of G.o.d; perhaps in that sacred place she might find again what she had lost. In profound self-abas.e.m.e.nt the child entered, threw herself upon her knees before the altar, and closed her eyes. "Now, now I can pray!" she thought; but, just as upon that terrible night when she was robbed of her religion and peace of mind, devotion seemed near her, but to be eluding her clasp. There lay the guiltless little penitent, her soul full of piety, but unable to pray,--her heart full of tears, but unable to weep. She sprang up in despair. G.o.d was not here either. She had thought she heard him in the tempest, and that the wind was his breath,--but on the way home her uncle had explained to her that it was nothing but a current of air occasioned by the change of temperature on the earth's surface, or by violent showers of rain, and she was convinced that she had been wrong and that her uncle knew very much more than the pastor. But if she believed her uncle, she could not believe in G.o.d; it was not her fault, and yet this doubt weighed upon her as the first crime of her life. Her trusting soul was like the iron that glows long after the fire in which it was heated is quenched; her faith was extinguished, but the influence that her faith had exerted upon her endured and became her punishment. It began to grow dark; yet still she stood with head bowed and downcast eyes beside the wooden crucifix upon the tomb of her parents. The Christ who had been nailed to the cross for the sake of what her uncle called an illusion, seemed to regard her so reproachfully that she did not dare to look up at him; he had shed his precious blood for the faith which she denied; she almost thought he would tear away the hand nailed to the cross and extend it in menace towards her. An inexplicable shudder ran through her; again she fell upon her knees.

"Forgive, forgive!" she cried; and the tears burst forth and relieved the icy pressure upon her heart.

Then something grasped her shoulder and raised her from the ground. Was it her uncle, or the foul fiend, who was standing beside her?

"You are here, then," he sneered, "in the dark, kneeling and weeping.

Aha! I came to look for my quiet little philosopher, and I find a whimpering child praying to a wooden doll! Can you tell me where Ernestine Hartwich is?"

"Uncle," cried Ernestine, driven to defiance in her despair, "why do you persecute me so continually to-day? Can I not be alone for one hour? and must I give an account of every thought and word? You have taken from me everything in which I confided,--you have come between myself and G.o.d, so that I dare not go to the pastor, but must slip round his house as if I were a thief. Do you think all this does not pain me, and that I feel no remorse? Whatever you may teach me, I shall never be happy again. Why did you tell me there were no spirits, no angels, no G.o.d? I did not wish to know it. I loved G.o.d, and, however wretched I was, I could always hope that he would be kind and merciful to me; if no human being loved me, I could always think that he did.

And now I must bear everything that happens to me, hoping nothing and loving nothing,--no one,--not even you!"

Leuthold smiled, and stroked Ernestine's curls.

"I see now that I was wrong in treating a girl twelve years old like a boy of twenty. Too strong nourishment will not strengthen an invalid,--he cannot bear it; I ought to have thought of that, and not burdened your girlish brain with so much. I can understand your dislike of me as the innocent cause of your mental indigestion, and forgive you for it. Pardon me for overestimating your intellect,--it is my only injustice towards you."

Ernestine stood gloomily beside him, without a word; he could not guess what was pa.s.sing in her mind.

"I will leave you here, my dear child. Pray on,--you need fear no further disturbance. Go, kiss the feet of your Christ,--it will relieve your heart. Go, Ernestine; or are you embarra.s.sed by my presence? Shall I walk away? Well!"

He turned as if to go; but Ernestine held fast to his arm.

"I will go with you," she said sullenly. "I could not pray now if I tried. And I am not so stupid as you think me. I understood everything that you have taught me, and I do not believe any longer in--in--the other. What else do you require? One can cry without being thought silly; and I tell you I shall cry far oftener than I shall laugh. Oh, I shall cry all my life long!"

And she covered her face with her hands and sobbed aloud.

"You are nervous, my child. These tears come from mere bodily weakness.

In a few years you will smile at what causes them now. Do not be troubled that you cannot love any one,--not even me. All such childish things are left behind in the nursery. Whoever will be truly free must begin by standing alone. Every tie that links our heart to others, however lovable they may be, is a fetter. Whoever will be strong must cease to lean on others. Love knowledge alone,--all living things can be taken from you, and your love for them is a source of pain. Science is always yours,--an inexhaustible source of delight. Men are unjust.

They will estimate you not according to your mental powers, but your exterior advantages, and these are too trivial to gain their homage.

Science gives you your deserts,--she measures her gifts according to your diligence. Women will envy you; for your intellect will far outsoar theirs. Men will slight you; for you are not, and never will be, beautiful, and they require beauty beyond all else in a woman. You will meet with nothing but disappointment among your kind, if you are not resolved to expect nothing from them. If you would avoid every grief that they can cause you, learn early not to depend upon them; and to this end, science, the culture of the mind, alone can lead you.

Intellect will indemnify us for all the woes and necessities of humanity,--through it we can rise to the true dignity of our nature.

Therefore, my child, seek out the true nourishment for the intellect, and the blind instincts of your heart will soon die in the clear light of the mind. You long for peace; trust me, it is to be found only in your mind, not in love."